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WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



JOHN BIGELOW 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

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1890 



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Copyright, 1890, 
By JOHN BIGEL0V7. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., V. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. 



PREFACE. 



If there is any excuse for this publication, it 
must be found in the fact that I was associated 
with Mr. Bryant for many years in the manage- 
ment of " The Evening Post " newspaper, my con- 
nection with it commencing at about the same 
period of life as his ; in the fact that we there 
contracted personal relations which he was pleased 
late in life to crown by naming me one of the 
executors of his will; and finally in the hope I 
entertain that a compendious and comparatively 
inexpensive sketch of his instructive career may 
reach a class, not inconsiderable in numbers, who 
have neither the leisure nor opportunities for pe- 
rusing the elaborate and scholarly biography by 
Mr. Godwin. 

Whatever may be the imperfections of this 
work, — and no one is likely to be more sensible 
of them than I am, — I permit myself to indulge 
the hope that in quarters where the nature and 
importance of Bryant's life-work are little known 



VI PREFACE. 

or imperfectly appreciated, it may assist to awaken 
a curiosity which will not be satisfied until the 
name of Bryant has become a household word, 
and his example the very lowest standard of pub- 
lic and private morals in any American family. 

The Squirrels, February 3, 1890. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Ancestry 1 

II. School-Days 8 

III. Law Studies 23 

IV. The Barrister 34 

V. The Adventurer 54 

VI. The Journalist . 70 

VII. The Poet 117 

VIII. The Tourist 176 

IX. The Orator . . . . . . . .200 

X. Public Honors 215 

XI. Personal and Domestic Habits .... 258 

XII. Last Days . . ...... 297 

Appendix A. Reminiscences of the "Evening Post," 

by William Cullen Bryant 312 

Appendix B. Bryant's Will 343 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 



CHAPTER I. 

ANCESTRY. 

Early in the summer of 1817, a package of 
manuscript poems was left at the office of the 
" North American Review" x without their author's 
name or any intimation of their real parentage. 
In due time they found their way into the hands 
of Mr. William Phillips, one of the editors of the 
" Review," to whom they were addressed. 

No sooner had he finished their perusal — such is 
the tradition — than he seized his hat and set out 
in hot haste for Cambridge, to submit them to his 
editorial colleagues, Richard H. Dana and Edward 
T. Channing, who with Mr. Phillips constituted 
the Editorial Trinity to whom the management of 
the " Review " was then confided. 

They listened while the manuscript was read, 
and what little was known of its history was reca- 
pitulated to them. " Ah, Phillips,' f said Dana at 
last, his face breaking the while into a skeptical 

1 This Review was published in Boston, and at this time was 
but two years old. 



2 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

smile, " you have been imposed upon. No one on 
this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such 
verse." Mr. Dana's view seemed to have so many 
presumptions in its favor that he set out at once to 
Boston to investigate the subject, with the aid of 
such clues as the package itself afforded. The 
final result of his inquiries was that Phillips, 
though under an erroneous impression as to the 
author, had not been imposed upon as to its Amer- 
ican genesis. 

The verses which had produced such a fluttering 
among the presiding justices of our highest literary 
tribunal in those days were not an imported article, 
still less the work of any American literary nota- 
bility of the period, but of a country lad of only 
seventeen years, residing at Cummington, in the 
western part of Massachusetts, who had never 
been out of his native county in his life. One of 
the poems was entitled u Thanatopsis." It appeared 
in the September number of the " North American 
Review" for 1817, and proved to be not only the 
finest poem which had yet been produced on this 
continent, but one of the most remarkable poems 
ever produced at such an early age, and a poem 
which would have added to the fame of almost any 
poet of any age, while it would have detracted 
from the fame of none. 

From the day this poem appeared, the name of 
its author, which till then had scarcely been heard 
farther from home than the range of the human 
voice, was classed among the most cherished liter- 



ANCESTRY. 3 

ary assets of the nation. Like the mythic Hermes, 
who before the sun had reached its zenith on the 
day of his birth had stolen and slaughtered the 
cattle of Apollo, young William Cullen Bryant, 
with scarcely less startling precocity, before he was 
out of his teens had possessed himself of Apollo's 
lyre, and established himself as the undisputed 
laureate of America. 

One of the wisest of Spanish proverbs says, 1 
" There is little curiosity about the pedigree of a 
good man." 

There certainly is no higher patent of nobility 
than goodness, and yet the biographer cannot help 
dwelling with satisfaction upon the fact that the 
gifted bard whose career is to be the theme of the 
following pages was descended through both his 
parents from passengers in the Mayflower, the 
oldest and noblest pedigree of which our republi- 
can heralds take any note. One of these ances- 
tors, Josiah Snell, married Anna Alden, the grand- 
daughter of Captain John Alden of the Mayflow r er 
party and Priscilla Mullins, whose story is so 
sw T eetly told by Longfellow. 2 

The first of the name in this country and 
founder of the family, Stephen Bryant, was also 
one of the Mayflower party. The poet's great 

1 Al hombre bueno no le busquen abolengo. 

2 '• I cannot refer to this poem," says Mr. Godwin, "without 
remarking how much it adds to our interest in John and Priscilla 
to know that our two earliest and most eminent poets, Bryant 
and Longfellow, were descended from them." — Godwin's Life, 
i. 50. 



4 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

grandfather, Ichabod Bryant, was noted for his 
gigantic size and strength. His grandfather, Dr. 
Philip Bryant, who was a physician, lived to the 
age of eighty-five, and visited his patients till 
within a fortnight of his death. It is related of 
the poet's uncle, Ebenezer Snell, Jr., that while at 
work in his father's cornfield, hearing unusual 
sounds he put his ear to the ground and recog- 
nized the thundering roar of distant cannon. It 
was the memorable battle of Bunker Hill. He 
enlisted at once as a volunteer, and later had the 
distinguished privilege of witnessing the surrender 
of Burgoyne at Saratoga. 

Dr. Peter Bryant, the father of William Cullen, 
in defiance of obstacles and privations in early life 
to which a feeble nature must have succumbed, at- 
tained an honorable rank as a physician and sur- 
geon, was fond of books, was well read in his 
profession according to the standard of the time, 
had a more than elementary acquaintance with 
some of the ancient and modern tongues, delighted 
in poetry and music, played the violin, and was 
sufficiently handy with tools to make for himself a 
bass-viol, upon which he also learned to play. 

His son has described him as a man of a mild 
and indulgent temper, somewhat silent, though not 
hesitating in conversation, not thrifty in a worldly 
sense, his patients usually paying him whatever 
they pleased. He was careful, however, and scru- 
pulously neat in his attire, and " had a certain 
metropolitan air." In figure he was square built, 



ANCESTRY. 5 

with muscular arms and legs, and in " his prime 
was possessed of great strength." He took a lively 
interest in politics, and belonged to the party called 
Federalists, who at that time were strong in Massa- 
chusetts, but in the Union at large in a minority. 
He represented Cummington for several successive 
years in both branches of the Massachusetts legis- 
lature. 

Of his mother, Sarah Snell, the daughter of 
Ebenezer Snell, of Cummington, the poet has left 
the following graphic portrait : — 

" She was born in North Bridge water, and was 
brought by her father when a little child to Cum- 
mington. She was tall, of an erect figure, and 
until rather late in life of an uncommonly youthful 
appearance. She was a person of excellent prac- 
tical sense, of a quick and sensitive moral judg- 
ment, and had no patience with any form of deceit 
or duplicity. Her prompt condemnation of injus- 
tice, even in those instances in which it is toler- 
ated by the world, made a strong impression upon 
me in early life, and if in the discussion of public 
questions 'I have in my riper age endeavored to 
keep in view the great rule of right without much 
regard to persons, it has been owing in a great de- 
gree to the force of her example, which taught me 
never to countenance a wrong because others did. 
My mother was a careful economist, which the cir- 
cumstances of her family compelled her to be, and 
by which she made some amends for my father's 
want of attention to the main chance. She had a 



6 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

habit of keeping a diary, in which the simple oc- 
cupations of the day and the occurrences in which 
the family or the neighborhood had an interest 
were noted down." 

Having been taken to a new settlement when she 
was only six years old, Mrs. Bryant had enjoyed 
few of the advantages of a school-taught educa- 
tion. She had managed, nevertheless, to acquire a 
creditable mastery of the rudimentary branches of 
learning. As a wife and mother she did most of 
the household work. She spun and wove, cut and 
made most of the clothing of her large family, 
wove her own carpets, made her own candles, 
taught her children to read and write, and was one 
of the first at the bedside of the sick and afflicted 
of her neighborhood. She took a lively interest 
in public affairs, both state and national, and ex- 
erted no inconsiderable influence in promoting 
township and neighborhood improvements. She 
w r as, in fact, a housewife fashioned on the old He- 
brew model : — 

" The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. 
She will do him good and not evil all the days of her 
life. 

" She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly 
with her hands. 

u She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat 
to her household, and a portion to her maidens. 

" She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands 
hold the distaff. 



ANCESTRY. 7 

H She stretcheth out her hand to the poor ; yea, she 
reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 

" Strength and honor are her clothing ; and she shall 
rejoice in time to come. 

u She openeth her mouth with wisdom ; and in her 
tongue is the law of kindness. 

" She looketh well to the ways of her household, and 
eateth not the bread of idleness. 

" Her children rise up, and call her blessed ; her hus- 
band also, and he praiseth her." l 

1 Proverbs xxxi. 



CHAPTEE II. 

SCHOOL-DAYS. 

1794-1810. 

William Cullen Bryant, the second of seven 
children of Dr. Peter and Sarah Snell Bryant, was 
born at Cummington, 1 in the county of Hampshire, 

1 In the Massachusetts Historical Society Collection, vol, xx. p. 
41, may be found the following account of Cummington as it was 
in 1820: — 

1 'Name derived from Col. Cummings (John) of Concord, who 
purchased this town of the General Court June 2d, 1762. 

1 ' Situated on a ridge of mountains and owing to the abrupt 
declivities of the hills, the pastures and woods may be viewed as 
a picture. 

il Westfield River, a considerable stream, rising in Windsor runs 
through this town in a southeast direction, and empties into the 
Connecticut at Westfield. 

" The inhabitants have a library of 72 volumes. The largest 
private library belongs to Peter Bryant, Esq. , and contains about 
700 volumes. 

" Hon. Peter Bryant, member of Massachusetts Medical Socie- 
ty, died of pulmonary consumption at his residence March 19, 
1820, in the 53d year of his age. Born at Bridge water August 
12, 1767. Studied physic and surgery at Norton with Dr. Prilete, 
a French practitioner. When about twenty-two years of age 
came to Cummington, where he settled and acquired a very ex- 
tensive and lucrative practice and a reputation truly enviable. 
He was also in the habit of instructing students in medicine. 
These were attracted from different parts of the country 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 9 

in the State of Massachusetts, on the third day of 
the month of November, 1794. Our republic, con- 
sisting then of only fifteen States, was not quite ten 
years old ; the second term of oar first President 
had not expired; Washington, Jefferson, Hamil- 
ton, Adams, Gallatin, and Madison were foremost 
among the statesmen to whom the nation had con- 
fided its political destinies ; they were also the models 
it commended to the young men of that and suc= 
ceeding generations. Europe was convulsed by the 
new idea of human rights which for the first time 
received national sanction and guaranties from 
her wronged and exiled offspring on this side the 
Atlantic, while Kant, Goethe, Schiller, and Burns 
were in an unconscious way doing what in them lay 
to reconcile her people to greater social and political 
changes which were impending. 

William Cullen was thought to be a precocious 
child. On his first birthday there is a record that 
" he could go alone, and when but a few days more 
than sixteen months old, that he knew all the let- 
ters of the alphabet." 

by his well-selected library, his extensive practice, and his general 
reputation. The advantages enjoyed at this school are thought 
to have been superior to any in the western part of the State. 

' ' In 1806 Williams College conferred on him the degree of Mas- 
ter of Arts, University of Cambridge that of Doctor of Physic 
1818. 

According to the Census of 1820 population of Cummington 
1060." 

Cummington was incorporated June 23, 1779. The first town 
meeting was held December 20th, same year. At this meeting 
Ebenezer Snell among others was elected one of the selectmen 
and assessors. 



10 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Though apt to learn, he is reported to have been 
" puny and very delicate in body, and of a pain- 
fully delicate nervous temperament." 

Before he had completed his fourth year he was 
sent to the district school, " but not with much regu- 
larity." 

" I have no recollection," he has told us, " of 
irksomeness in studying my lessons or in the dis- 
cipline of the school. I only recollect gathering 
spearmint by the brooks in company with my fel- 
low scholars, taking off my hat at their bidding in 
a light summer shower that the rain might fall on 
my hair and make it grow, and that I once awoke 
from a sound nap to find myself in the lap of the 
schoolmistress, and was vexed to be thus treated 
like a baby." 

In the spring of 1799, Dr. Bryant went to live at 
the homestead of his wife's father, Ebenezer Snell, 
a property which is still in the family. While 
there William went with his elder brother Austin 
to a district school kept in a little house which 
then stood near by on the bank of the rhailet which 
flows by the dwelling. The instruction which he 
received there was of the most elementary char- 
acter, stopping at grammar, unless we include 
theology as learned from the Westminster Cate- 
chism, which was one of the Saturday exercises. 

" I was an excellent, almost an infallible spell- 
er," he tells us, " and ready in geography ; but 
in the Catechism, not understanding the abstract 
terms, I made but little progress." He was also 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 11 

one of the fleetest runners in the school, and not 
inexpert at playing ball, though his frame was too 
light for distinction in some of the rougher games. 

In the year 1808, and in the twelfth year of his 
age, it having been decided that he was worth 
a collegiate education, he was sent to live with 
his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Snell, at North Brook- 
field, to perfect himself in Latin. In eight months 
he had mastered all the language then required for 
admission to the Sophomore class at Williams Col- 
lege, and on the 9th of August, 1809, he was 
transferred to the care of the Rev. Moses Halleck, 
in the neighboring township of Plainfield, to be 
equipped with the requisite knowledge of Greek. 
He always thought himself most fortunate in his 
instructors, especially in the moral influence which 
they exerted upon him at that tender age. 

" My Uncle Snell," he tells us, " was a man of 
fine personal appearance and great dignity of char- 
acter and manner, the slightest expression of whose 
wish had the force of command. He was a rigid 
moralist, who never held parley with wrong in any 
form, and was an enemy of every kind of equiv- 
ocation. As a theologian, he was' trained in the 
school of Dr. Hopkins, which then, I think, in- 
cluded most of the country ministers of the Con- 
gregational Church in Massachusetts. The Rev. 
Moses Halleck was somewhat famous for preparing 
youths for college, and his house was called by 
some the Bread and Milk College, for the reason 
that bread and milk was a frequent dish at the 



12 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

good man's table. And a good man he really was, 
kind and gentle and of the most scrupulous con- 
scientiousness. ' I value Mr. Halleck,' my grand- 
father used to say, ' his life is so exemplary.' He 
was paid a dollar a week for my board and in- 
struction. ' I can afford it for that,' he was in the 
habit of saying, ' and it would not be honest to 
take more.' " 

With such guides and under such influences 
young Bryant made marvelous proficiency. He 
went through the Colloquies of Corderius, the 
.ZEneid, Eclogues, and Georgics of Virgil, and a 
volume of the Select Orations of Cicero with his 
uncle Snell in eight months, and in two months 
with the Rev. Mr. Halleck, " knew the Greek Tes- 
tament as if it had been English." He then re- 
turned to his father's house to perfect his prepara- 
tions for admission to college by himself, with the 
exception of two months in the following spring 
spent with Mr. Halleck in the study of mathe- 
matics. 

Bryant began to rhyme at almost as early a 
period of life as a chicken begins to scratch, and 
when scarce ten years old received a ninepenny 
coin from his grandfather for a rhymed version 
of the first chapter of the book of Job. The same 
year he wrote and declaimed a rhymed descrip- 
tion of the school he attended, which was thought 
worthy of a place in the columns of the county 
paper. Though these early verses gave no par- 
ticular poetical promise, they were remarkable for 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 13 

two characteristics by which all his poetry was 
destined to be distinguished : the correctness both 
of the measure and the rhyme. 

At this early age he had already conceived the 
hope and was inflamed by the ambition to be a 
poet. There seemed to him to be no other kind of 
success in life so desirable. He greedily devoured 
whatever poetry fell in his way, and even made the 
favors of the muse one of the subjects of his daily 
devotions. 

" In a community so religious," he relates, " I 
naturally acquired habits of devotion. My mother 
and grandmother had taught me, as soon as I could 
speak, the Lord's Prayer and other little petitions 
suited to childhood, and I may be said to have 
been nurtured on Watts' devout poems composed 
for children. The prayer of the publican in the 
New Testament was often in my mouth, and I 
heard every variety of prayer at the Sunday even- 
ing services conducted by laymen in private houses. 
But I varied in my private devotions from these 
models in one respect, namely, in supplicating, as 
I often did, that I might receive the gift of poetic 
genius and write verses that might endure. I pre- 
sented this petition in those early years with great 
fervor, but after a time I discontinued the practice, 
I can hardly say why. As a general rule, what- 
ever I might innocently wish I did not see why I 
should not ask, and I was a firm believer in the 
efficacy of prayer. The Calvinistic system of di- 
vinity I adopted, of course, as I heard nothing else 



14 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

taught from the pulpit, and supposed it to be the 
accepted belief of the religious world." 

Bryant has recorded the delight with which in 
those early days he and his brothers welcomed the 
translation of the Iliad by Pope, when it was 
added to their household library. He thought 
them the finest verses that had ever been written, 
not a very surprising estimate for a lad whose 
poetical diet had consisted mainly of the hymns of 
Dr. Watts. Already, too, his peculiar suscepti- 
bility to the poetical aspects of the varied phe- 
nomena of nature was fully devoloped. 

"I was always," he says, "from my earliest 
years, a delighted observer of external nature, — 
the splendors of a winter daybreak over the wide 
wastes of snow seen from our windows, the glories 
of the autumnal woods, the gloomy approaches of 
the thunderstorm and its departure amid sunshine 
and rainbows, the return of the spring with its 
flowers, and the first snow-fall of winter. The 
poets fostered this taste in me, and thoiigh at that 
time I rarely heard such things spoken of, it was 
none the less cherished in my secret mind." 

The embargo laid upon all the ports of the 
republic at the suggestion of President Jefferson 
proved disastrous to many private interests in New 
England, and rendered the President and his party 
extremely unpopular in that section of the Union. 
Dr. Bryant was a zealous Federalist, and as he rep- 
resented that party in the legislature for many 
years, a good deal of political reading of an inflam- 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 15 

matory character naturally found its way into the 
Bryant household, and made all the boys more or 
less ardent partisans. 

It had already become so much the habit of 
William Cullen to reduce to verse whatever in- 
terested him deeply, that it was probably with- 
out surprise that his father learned his son had 
found relaxation from the study of Virgil and Cic- 
ero in inditing a satire against democracy and its 
accredited chieftain. 

The tone of his verses harmonized so completely 
with the temper of the Federalists of Massachu- 
setts in those days, that his father encouraged him 
to extend them until they numbered some five hun- 
dred lines, which the proud father took to Boston 
and had published in a little pamphlet, partly no 
doubt to indulge his zeal as a politician, but more 
to indulge his fatherly pride. 1 

Some disparaging lines about President Jeffer- 
son, concluding with a recommendation to him to 
resign his office, have given to this poem a noto- 
riety which it never would have acquired but for 
the fact that Mr. Bryant lived to become one of 

1 This poem appeared in a thin pamphlet under the title of 
The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times. A Satire by a Youth of 
Thirteen. Boston. Printed for the purchasers, 1808. It sold 
promptly, and received enough praise from the press to have 
turned a lighter head than Bryant's. 

The prompt sale of this satire encouraged the father to pub- 
lish a second edition the following year, with the addition of some 
half-dozen shorter poems, and the author's name on the title- 
page. In his mature years Bryant declined any responsibility for 
these juvenilia. 



16 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

the most influential champions of the so-called 
Jeffersonian democracy, and for the lack of more 
effective weapons, it delighted the Federal press 
occasionally to quote these lines about Jefferson, 
omitting the fact that they were written when the 
author was a schoolboy in roundabouts, 

" And thou the scorn of every patriot's name 
Thy country's ruin and thy council's shame ! 
Poor servile thing ! derision of the brave ! 
Who erst from Tarleton fled to Carter's Cave ; 
Thou who when menaced by perfidious Gaul, 
Did'st prostrate to her whisker' d minion fall; 
And when our cash her empty bags supplied 
Did'st meanly strive the foul disgrace to hide ; 
Go, wretch, resign the Presidential chair, 
Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair. 
Go search with curious eye for horrid frogs 
Mid the wild wastes of Louisianian bogs ; 
Or where Ohio rolls his turbid stream, 
Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme. 
Go scan, Philosophist, thy Sally's charms, 
And sink supinely in her sable arms ; 
But quit to abler hands the helm of State.'' 

Not discouraged by Jefferson's neglect to resign 
the presidency at his bidding, the young poet is 
next found disciplining Napoleon, who also had in- 
curred the censure of the good people of Hamp- 
shire County. The genius of Columbia is invoked, 
and ten stanzas only are required to bring " the 
Eastern despot's dire career " to an ignominious 
close. 

While neither the embargo nor any of the forty 
or fifty smaller pieces of verse which date from his 
school-days were thought by their author to be wor- 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 17 

thy of appearing in any collection of his writings, 
they were justly regarded by his contemporaries as 
" the flowering laurel on his brow." Though but 
" surface indications " of vernal fertility, they were 
conspicuous for their correctness both in measure 
and rhyme, about which he was always singularly 
conscientious. Nor had his time been lost upon 
them, for they had given him an uncommon dex- 
terity in handling the tools of the poet. Had he 
not acquired this dexterity early in life and before 
he was thrown upon his own resources for a liveli- 
hood, it may be doubted if he would now be most 
widely known to the world as a poet. 

Bryant entered the sophomore class at Williams 
College on the 9th of October, 1810. " He was 
well advanced in his sixteenth year," says one of 
his classmates, "tail and slender in his physical 
structure, and having a prolific growth of dark 
brown hair." He was quick and dexterous in his 
movements, and his younger brother used to brag 
to other boys about his " stout brother," but after- 
wards learned that his strength was not so remark- 
able as his skill and alertness in the use of it. He 
passed also for being comely in his appearance. 

Dr. Fitch was President of Williams College 
when Bryant entered, and was the sole instructor 
of the senior class. Professor Chester Dewey 
taught the junior class, and two recent graduates 
superintended the recitations of the two lower 
classes. As these four gentlemen represented the 
entire educational force of this seat of learning at 



18 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

that time, we are not surprised to learn from the 
poet himself " that the standard of scholarship 
was so low that many graduates of those days 
would be no more than prepared for admission as 
freshmen now." 1 

Before the close of his first year he asked from 
the college an honorable dismission. His purpose 
then was to enter Yale at the commencement of 
the next collegiate year. 2 The reason assigned 
for this step was the example of his room-mate, to 
whom he w T as greatly attached, and who had formed 
the purpose of going to Yale at the same time. 
From some verses, however, which he delivered be- 
fore one of the college societies, the existence of 
motives less complimentary to the college were dis- 
closed. They show that he was satisfied neither 
with the climate, town, college, nor its authorities. 
The strength of his feeling upon the subject may 
be inferred from the following extract : — 

" Why should I sing- these reverend domes 
Where Science rests in grave repose ? 

1 1874-1875. 

2 In a note addressed to the Rev. H. W. Powers, written only 
a few months before his death, in 187S, Mr. Bryant said : — 

" I entered Williams College a year in advance, that is to say, 
I was matriculated as sophomore, never having been a freshman. 
I remained there two terms only, but I pursued my studies with 
the intent to become a student at Yale, for which I prepared my- 
self, intending to enter the junior class there. My father, how- 
ever, was not able, as he told me, to bear the expense. I had re- 
ceived an honorable dismission from Williams College, and was 
much disappointed at being obliged to end my college course in 
that way." 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 19 

All me ! their terrors and their glooms 
Only the wretched inmate knows. 
Where through the horror breathing hall 
The pale-faced moping students crawl 
Like spectral monuments of woe : 
Or, drooping, seek the unwholesome cell 
Where shade and dust and cobwebs dwell, 
Dark, dirty, dank and low.' ' 

The facts were that the college was poor, the stu- 
dents were generally poor, the instruction in the 
main must have been poor, and, to a person brought 
up as Bryant had been, the diet and domestic ac- 
commodations seemed and doubtless were poor. 

" When the time drew near that I should apply 
for admission at Yale," says Bryant, " my father 
told me that his means did not allow him to main- 
tain me at New Haven, and that I must give up 
the idea of a full course of education. I have 
always thought this unfortunate for me, since it 
left me but superficially acquainted with several 
branches of education which a college course would 
have enabled me to master and would have given 
me greater readiness in their application." 

We only feel the want of what we have not, 
commonly overlooking what Providence may have 
substituted in its place, and it was natural for 
Bryant to regret his ignorance of what he might 
have learned in the two succeeding years at Yale ; 
but I have little doubt that he passed that time far 
more profitably than he was likely to have passed 
it in any American college of that period, or, 
indeed, perhaps of any period. He was at home, 



20 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

and surrounded, as he would not have been at col- 
lege, with the choicest domestic influences, and was 
as diligent a student as he could or should have 
been anywhere. If he lacked some advantages, he 
secured others of equal or greater value, among 
which the employments of the farm and an active 
open-air life were to him of prime importance. 1 

He carefully explored his father's medical library, 
and read so much in it and with such profit that 
he narrowly escaped being a physician. By the 
aid of experiments performed in his father's labo- 
ratory and such text-books as he found at hand, he 
acquired more than a smattering of chemistry. 
From some books in which the Linnaean system 
was explained and illustrated, he made himself 
quite an accomplished botanist. He devoured, be- 
sides, all the poetry he could lay his hands on; 
enlarged his acquaintance with the literature of 
antiquity, of which he had before only possessed 
himself partially of the languages ; made extensive 
translations from Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead 

1 The quality of his daily life at this period may be gathered 
from the following- lines written in 1812. They also show that he 
was not quite reconciled to the "peasant's toil " which filled each 
' ' long laborious day, ' ' in this respect not differing from most 
other boys : — 

" The time has been when fresh as air 

I loved at morn the hills to climb. 

With dew drenched feet and bosom bare 

And ponder on the artless rhyme ; 

And through the long laborious day 
(For mine has been the peasant's toil), 

I hummed the meditated lay 

While the slow oxen turned the soil." 



SCHOOL-DAYS. 21 

in prose, and from Anacreon, Bion, and Sophocles 
in verse, and became thoroughly imbued with what 
was least perishable in the writings of Burns, Cow- 
per, Thompson, Wordsworth, and Southey, and 
later of Henry Kirke White, whose poetry had for 
him at that time a peculiar fascination. 

" The melancholy tone which prevails in them," 
he says, " deepened the interest with which I read 
them, for about that time I had, as young poets are 
apt to have, a liking for poetry of a querulous 
cast." 

" Enterprising poverty," says Horace, " made me 
a poet." 1 The restrictions, privations, and depress- 
ing associations which are the heritage of the youth- 
ful poor always lead them, at the age when the imag- 
ination is yet more active than the judgment, to 
make a world for themselves which is abundantly 
equipped with what their real life most lacks. To 
perpetuate these dreams in verse is as natural for 
them as to fly to shelter from a storm, or to seek 
food when hungry. 

The measure of poverty which recalled Bryant 
from college, which shut out from his gaze the 
great world and the expanded life about which he 
had read in his books, which condemned him to the 
" peasant's toil" on his father's farm, and the 
sequestered life of his native village drove him 
early — 

1 Decisis Immilem pennis, inopemque paterni 
Et laris et fundi, paupertas inipulit audax 
Ut versus facer em. 

Epist. II. 2. 50. 



22 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

li To quiet valley and shaded glen 

And forest and meadow and slope of hill," 

where his teeming fancy constructed a world more 
to his taste, a world which expanded with his years, 
and in which he was destined to pass the happiest 
and by far the largest portion of his life. Let 
the aspiring lad who drags the chain of poverty, 
and who sighs for the opportunities which wealth 
alone confers, consider that those who have such 
opportunities pretty uniformly dwell in houses 
made with hands, and know nothing of the cloud- 
capped towers and gorgeous palaces which the im- 
agination provides so generously for the gifted 
poor. Hence perhaps it is, that great poets are so 
scarce who in their early years have been swathed 
in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously 
every day. 



CHAPTER III. 

LAW STUDIES. 

1811-1814. 

If his parents could not allow William Cullen 
the means of completing his course of study at col- 
lege, William Cullen was not the sort of boy to 
allow himself to settle down a.t home in permanent 
dependence upon them. With four brothers, each 
more robust than himself, his services on the farm 
were superfluous. Where and how was he to pro- 
vide for himself was the question which intruded 
upon him perpetually from the moment he be- 
came aware that his academic hopes were extin- 
guished. He did not think seriously of literature 
for a livelihood, though all his tastes allured him 
in that direction. He had as yet no assurance of 
his ability to attain any prominence among the 
men of letters of his generation, and, had he meas- 
ured his forces less modestly, no one knew better 
than he that literature in those days was anything 
but a bread- winning profession. 

It had been taken for granted almost from his 
birth that he was to follow the calling to which his 
paternal ancestors for three successive generations 



24 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

had been trained ; but the hardships of that calling 
had proved so trying, and its rewards so scanty, that 
Dr. Bryant was indisposed to entail it upon any 
of his descendants. Perhaps, too, by the time this 
crisis occurred in the young man's fortune, Dr. 
Bryant had reached the conclusion at which most 
intelligent physicians sooner or later arrive, that 
they are more dependent for their livelihood upon 
the credulity and ignorance of their patients than 
upon their own skill, and he did not care to intro- 
duce his son to a profession in which he might 
prove too conscientious to succeed. 

The lively interest in the politics of the country 
which William Cullen had exhibited from his ear- 
liest youth, and the success with which in his verses 
he had on several occasions interpreted popular 
emotions, suggested for him a public career. To 
that, the profession of the law was then the most 
if not the only remunerative avenue. The art of 
entering public life penniless and in a few years 
blooming into a millionaire was the discovery of a 
considerably later stage of republican evolution. 

The law was not precisely the calling to which 
he could consecrate himself with his whole heart, 
and he was not without misgivings that his shy and 
sensitive nature unfitted him for the life of con- 
flict by which the votaries of Themis have to win 
their laurels. Still it offered him the readiest 
means then in sight of earning his bread by his 
brains and a final exemption from the detested 
"peasant toil." These considerations, strength- 



LAW STUDIES. 25 

ened, as lie thought, by a perusal of the " Life of 
Sir William Jones," 2 "kicked the beam," and in 
December of the year he quit college, and in the 
seventeenth year of his age he entered the law 
office of a Mr. Howe, of Worthington, a quiet 
little village some four or five miles from Cum- 
mington. 

A young man's first year's study of the law 
commonly affects him like his first cigar, or his 
first experience " before the mast." Such appears 
to have been Bryant's experience. His new work, , 
which he was too conscientious to neglect, was not 
" peasant's toil," but it was scarcely less irksome 
to him. He sighed for the companionship and 
studies of his old classmates. Worthington he 
described to one of them in one of his moments 
of dejection as consisting of " a blacksmith's shop 
and a cow stable," where his only congenial enter- 
tainment was derived from the pages of Irving's 
u Knickerbocker." 



1 " One day," says Bryant in his autobiographic sketch, " my 
uncle brought home a quarto volume, the Life of Sir William 
Jones, by Lord Teigiimouth, which he had borrowed, as I imag- 
ine, expressly for my reading. I read it with great interest, and 
was much impressed with the extensive scholarship and other 
literary accomplishments of Sir William. I am pretty sure that 
his example made me afterward more diligent in my studies, and 
I think also that it inclined me to the profession of the law, which 
in due time I embraced. I recollect that a clergyman from a 
neighboring parish who came to exchange pulpits with my uncle 
observing me occupied with the book kindly said to me : ' You 
have only to be as diligent in your studies as that great man was, 
and, in time, you may write as fine verses as he did.' ' 



26 WILLIAM. CULLEN BRYANT. 

He was too shy to enjoy the little society that was 
accessible to him, and incurred a rebuke from Mr. 
Howe for giving to Wordsworth's " Lyrical Bal- 
lads " time that belonged to Blackstone and Chitty. 
Then, too, he appears about this time to have ex- 
perienced an affection of the heart to which all 
young men of his age are subject, especially if their 
time is not fully or pleasantly occupied. Nothing 
came of it, however, except verses. Even the name 
of their inspiration has not been preserved. She 
diad " blue eyes," ... u of timid look and soft 
retiring mien," . . . " moist lip and airy grace of 
frame." So much we learn from his tell-tale muse. 
For two summers the young poet seems to have 
worn the colors of this mysterious maid. Then mis- 
givings began to disturb the current of his passion, 
which soon terminated in an explosion and a dec- 
laration of independence. His fair one seems to 
have tried to impose terms upon her thrall which 
his pride resented, and he took his leave of her and 
of Love in terms which showed that his disen- 
chantment was complete. 

1 ' I knew thee fair — I deemed thee free 

From fraud and guile and faithless art ; 
Yet had I seen as now I see 

Thine image ne'er had stained my heart. 

11 Trust not too far thy beauty's charms. 

Though fair the hand that wove my chain 
I will not stoop with fettered arms, 
To do the homage I disdain. 



LAW STUDIES. 27 

<k Yes, Love has lost his power to wound ; 
I gave the treacherous homicide. 
With bow unstrung 1 and pinions bound, 
A captive to the hand of pride." 

This heroic termination of his first love affair was 
naturally the prelude to other changes. Worth- 
ington was too small a place, and its literary and 
social horizon too circumscribed, to long content a 
.young man who already felt the expansive forces 
of genius. He pined for the privilege of pursu- 
ing his studies in Boston. His father replied to 
his appeals that they could not be indulged except 
at an expense which would work injustice to the 
other members of the family. They compromised, 
and he went to Bridgewater, a somewhat larger 
town than Worthington and the residence of his 
grandfather, Dr. Philip Bryant, with whom he was 
to reside. He there entered the law office of Mr. 
William Baylies, a cultivated gentleman and a 
jurist of considerable repute. 

Young Bryant found the association congenial 
in every way, and at once concentrated upon the 
studies of his profession all the devotion he had 
been accustomed to waste upon " blue eyes " and 
" moist lips " during his residence at Worthington. 

This change of state is faithfully noted in some 
lines addressed about this time " to a friend on his 
marriage," and published a few years later in the 
" North American Review." 

"O'er Coke's black letter 
Trimming the lamp at eve, 'tis mine to pore, 
Well pleased to see the venerable sage 



28 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Unlock his treasured wealth of legal lore ; 

And I that loved to trace the woods before, 

And climb the hills a playmate of the breeze, 

Have vowed to tune the rural lay no more, 

Have bid my useless classics sleep at ease, 

And left the race of Bards to scribble, starve, and freeze." 

Bryant a little overstated the measure of his loyalty 
to " Coke's black letter," for within a month after 
his installation at Bridgewater he appears in the 
role of "the poet" at a Fourth of July celebra- 
tion in the village, and, while deploring in some 
indifferent verses the folly of war, rejoiced over the 
downfall of Napoleon, upon whose movements he 
still kept a pretty sharp eye, and to v heaven and 
England ascribed all the honor and glory of deliv- 
ering the world from a scourge. 

" To thee the mighty plan we owe 

That bade the world be free ; 
The thanks of nations, Queen of Isles, 

Are poured to heaven and thee. 
Yes, hadst not thou with fearless arm 

Stayed the descending scourge, 
These strains, that chant a nation's birth, 

Had haply hymned its dirge." 

This poem, however, deserves to be regarded rather 
as the discharge of a civic duty than an infidelity 
to Coke, and certain it is that the written evidences 
that survive of his assiduity as a law student at 
this period are abundant and conclusive. 

The best possible proof of his diligence may 
be found in the relations the young student early 
established with Mr. Baylies, who during his ab- 



LAW STUDIES. 29 

sence at the seat of government 1 appears by their 
correspondence to have left his home business, po- 
litical as well as professional, mainly in Bryant's 
hands. His constituents were wont to repair to 
Bryant to learn what their representative at Wash- 
ington thought and was doing, and Baylies stud- 
ied Bryant's letters to know the views of his 
constituents. The war of 1812 was very unpop- 
ular in Bridgewater. Mr. Madison was known as 
" His Imbecility " in the young patriot's corre- 
spondence, and " His Imbecility " was warned if he 
imposed any more taxes the people would revolt. 
Nay, this predestined editor of the New York 
" Evening Post," and one of the most eloquent 
and uncompromising of all the American Ciceros 
in denouncing the Catilines of disunion a half cen- 
tury later, did not hesitate, in one of his ecstasies 
of youthful enthusiasm, to advise an open defiance 
of the Federal government if it persisted in the 
war. He even solicited a commission in the army, 
not for the defense of the United States, but for 
the defense of his native State against the United 
States, and the letter in which he opened his pur- 
pose to his father in October, 1814, was as full of 
treason as the Southern Confederate manifesto of 
1860. 

"I have a question for you," he wrote, " whether 
it would be proper for me to have anything to do 
with the army which is to be raised by voluntary 

1 Mr. Baylies was a member of Congress almost uninter- 
ruptedly from 1809 to 1817, and again for the years 1833-34-35. 



30 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

enlistment for the defense of the State. Attached 
as you are to your native soil, to its rights and 
safety, you could not surely be unwilling that your 
son should proffer his best exertions and even his 
life to preserve them from violation. The force 
now to be organized may not be altogether em- 
ployed against a foreign enemy ; it may become 
necessary to wield it against an intestine foe in 
the defense of dearer rights than those which are 
endangered in a contest with Great Britain. If we 
create a standing army of our own — if we take 
into our oivn hands the public revenue (for these 
things are contemplated in the answer to the 
Governor's message) we so far throw off all our 
allegiance to the general government ; we disclaim 
its control and revert to an independent empire. 
The posture therefore which is now taken by the 
State Legislature, if followed up by correspondent 
measures, is not without hazard. If we proceed 
in the manner we have begun and escape a civil 
war, it will probably be because the Administra- 
tion is awed by our strength from attempting our 
subjection. By increasing that strength, therefore, 
we shall lessen the probability of bloodshed, Every 
individual who helps forward the work of collect- 
ing this army takes the most efficient means in his 
power to bring the present state of things to a 
happy conclusion. ... It is not probable that the 
struggle in which we are to be engaged will be a 
long one. The war with Britain certainly will not. 
The people cannot exist under it, and if the gov- 



LAW STUDIES. 31 

ernment ivill not make peace Massachusetts must. 
Whether there may be an intestine contest or not 
admits of doubt ; and if there should be, the entire 
hopelessness of the Southern States succeeding 
against us will probably terminate it after the first 
paroxysm of anger and malignity is over." 

It is curious and instructive to see how precisely 
the arguments used by this hyper-patriotic young 
enthusiast correspond with those by which the 
Southern States of our Union, less than a half 
century later, were beguiled into open rebellion 
against the same national government. He rec- 
ommends " a standing army of our own," to be 
officered "not by the President" but "by our Gov- 
ernor," and "the taking into our own hands the 
public revenue," the very step that compelled the 
military occupation of Fort Sumter by Federal 
troops. These, like similar measures in 1860, 
were expected " to awe the administration at 
Washington from attempting our subjection " 
and to be followed, as proposed in 1861, by an 
alliance with England and the final reduction of 
the Southern States, either by the superior force 
of these Northern Confederates, or by despair, as 
later the Northern States were confidently ex- 
pected to yield to the assumed physical or moral 
superiority of the Southern Confederates. 

Not long after the letter to his father just cited 
was written, Bryant wrote another to Mr. Baylies, 
in the course of which he said : — 

" We hear that you legislators have got through 



32 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

with the Conscription bill and it is presented to the 
President to receive his sanction. God forgive the 
poor perjured wretch [' His Imbecility,' Mr. Mad- 
ison, is the unfortunate party here referred to] if 
he dare sign it. If the people of New England 
acquiesce in this law I will forswear Federalism." 2 

Bryant proved as good as his word. The people 
of New England did acquiesce, and he did for- 
swear Federalism. 

If the people of South Carolina, when they fired 
upon Fort Sumter to prevent the collection of the 
Federal revenues in the port of Charleston, in 
1861, had been able to quote this letter, which its 
author had, no doubt, forgotten, his unfaltering 
sense of justice would possibly have constrained him 
to deal more charitably with at least that portion of 
the insurgent population that was under twenty- 
one years of age than he did, or than the public 
opinion of the North was then prepared to tolerate. 

The family seem to have done nothing to dis- 
courage William Cullen's military aspirations, for 
in the year following, in July, 1816, a commission 
as adjutant in the Massachusetts militia was sent 
to him. 2 Meantime, however, the treaty of peace 

1 This threat was l ' the last ditch ' ' in embryo. 

2 The following- letter, dated Cummington, November 16, 
1814, has recently been discovered in the Massachusetts State 
Archives. The Hartford Convention met on the 15th of Decem- 
ber following : — 

To his Excellency Caleb Strong, Governor and Commander-in-chief 

of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts : 

Humbly represents that William C. Bryant, of Cummington, 
in the County of Hampshire, your petitioner, being" desirous to 



LAW STUDIES, 33 

had been negotiated at Ghent, and the Federalists 
were so delighted with the result that Bryant con- 
cluded to throw up his commission and to give the 
government at Washington another trial. 

It is a curious fact that the army which has fur- 
nished the inspiration of so much good poetry can 
hardly be said to have given to the world a single 
great poet, and yet the most eminent English and 
the most eminent American poet were both at one 
time on the point of embracing the profession of 
arms. 1 Had they done so, it is doubtful if either 
would ever have been heard of again as a bard. 

In August of the year in which the war with 
England was brought to a close, Bryant came of 
age and was admitted to the bar. With his license 
in his pocket he took leave of Bridgewater on the 
15th of the month, and returned to his family in 
Cummington, to take counsel in regard to the fu- 
ture, towards which he had thus far been walking 
by faith rather than by sight. 

enter the service of the State, in the present struggle with a pow- 
erful enemy, respectfully solicits your Excellency for a lieuten- 
ancy in the army about to be raised for the protection and defense 
of Massachusetts. Your petitioner presumes not to choose his 
station, but were he permitted to express a preference, he would 
request the place of first lieutenant in the First Regiment of In- 
fantry, but in this, as becomes him in all things, he is willing to 
rest on your Excellency's decision. Should your Excellency be 
induced to favor his wishes in this respect, he hopes to be faithful 
and assiduous in the discharge of his duty. And your petitioner 
shall ever pray, etc. William C Bryant. 

1 Phillips tells us that it was in contemplation at one time to 
make his uncle, John Milton, adjutant-general in Sir William 
Waller's army. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE BARRISTER. 
1815-1822. 

Where young Bryant was to pursue his profes- 
sion was now as embarrassing a problem in the 
Bryant household as the choice of a profession to 
pursue had been four years before. He yearned 
to go to Boston ; but how was an unknown and 
morbidly shy young man like him to subsist in that 
comparatively expensive city while its inhabitants 
were discovering his professional merits ? North- 
ampton, New Bedford, and other places were in 
turn discussed, but for one reason or another re- 
jected, and finally, taking counsel of the family 
exchequer, he decided " to settle " at Plainfield, a 
modest village in full view of Cummington, though 
four or five miles distant, where, though his legal 
skill might not be in great demand, his expenses 
would be proportionately light. Plainfield is still 
a village of less than five hundred inhabitants. 
Seventy years ago, when the sign of " William Cul- 
len Bryant, Attorney-at-Law " decorated its princi- 
pal street, it had less than one fourth its present 
population. Time has vindicated the conclusion 



THE BARRISTER. 35 

which soon forced itself upon him, that there was 
no future for a lawyer in Plainfield, and that the 
earliest opportunity of taking his professional ac- 
complishments to a better market was not to be 
neglected. He had been there but about eight 
months when he was invited to enter into partner- 
ship with a young lawyer of Great Barrington, 
whose practice was then worth about §1200 a year. 
Bryant accepted the proposal with alacrity, and 
early in the month of October, 1816, set out for 
his new field of labor on the banks of the Housa- 
tonic. Of this change of base, Bryant has left the 
following account : — 

" I had attempted the practice of the law in a 
neighborhood where there was little employment 
for one of my profession, and, after a twelve 
months' trial, I transferred my residence to Great 
Barrington, near the birthplace and summer resi- 
dence of Miss Sedgwick, in the pleasant county of 
Berkshire. It was on the 3d of October that I 
made the journey thither from Cummington. The 
woods were in all the glory of autumn, and [in 
1871] I well remember as I passed through Stock- 
bridge how much I was struck by the beauty of 
the smooth green meadows on the banks of that 
lovely river which winds near the Sedgwick, fam- 
ily mansion ; the Housatonic, whose gently flow- 
ing waters seemed tinged with the gold and crim- 
son of the trees that overhung them. I admired 
no less the contrast between this soft scene and the 
steep, craggy hills that overlooked it, clothed with 



36 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

their many-colored forests. I had never before 
seen the southern part of Berkshire, and congratu- 
lated myself on becoming an inhabitant of so pic- 
turesque a region." 

It is too characteristic of Bryant to escape no- 
tice, that the things which absorbed his attention 
and commended this new home to his affections were 
the smooth green meadow, the gently flowing wa- 
ters of the Housatonic ; the craggy hills, the many- 
colored forests, while not a thought is given appar- 
ently to the indications of social, industrial, and 
commercial activities of the country around him, 
out of which as a lawyer he might hope to get 
a livelihood. His eye was more intent upon the 
material his new home would afford him for mak- 
ing verses than for making briefs. 

Before the first year of his partnership had rolled 
around he purchased his partner's interest " for a 
mere trifle," and from that time until his retire- 
ment from the profession prosecuted it alone. 

Though now as comfortably established as the 
average country lawyer, Bryant did not " accept the 
situation " cheerfully. Writing to his old teacher 
and friend, Mr. Baylies, he saj^s : — 

" You ask whether I am pleased with my pro- 
fession. Alas, sir, the muse was my first love, 
and the remains of that passion which is not cooled 
out nor chilled into extinction will always, I fear, 
cause me to look coldly on the severe beauties of 
Themis. Yet I tame myself to its labors as well 
as I can, and have endeavored to discharge with 



THE BARRISTER. 37 

punctuality and attention such of the duties of my 
profession as I am capable of performing." 

While he had a partner the trial and argument 
of causes fell mostly to him, but when they sepa- 
rated he had to resume the duties of the barrister. 
Speaking of this change he wrote to Mr. Baylies : 

" I am trying my hand at it again. . . . Upon 
the whole I have every cause to be satisfied with 
my situation. Place a man where you will, it is an 
easy thing for him to dream out a more eligible 
mode of life than the one which falls to his lot. 
While I have too much of the inauvaise Jwnte to 
seek opportunities of this nature, I have whipped 
myself up to a desperate determination not to avoid 
them." 

There is something in the tone of this letter which 
shows that the dove from young Bryant's ark had 
not yet found its resting-place. Audax paupertas 
was doing, but had not yet done for him its perfect 
work. It had effectively thus far prevented his 
becoming content with the opportunities and alli- 
ances then within his reach. It was still his best 
friend. It had better work and on a larger the- 
atre in reserve for him than the invisa nego- 
tia of settling the disputes of country villagers. 
The Fates were spinning for him the thread out of 
which quite a different destiny was to be woven 
than was yet in sight. 1 

1 In a lengthy notice of Bryant which appeared in the Berk- 
shire Eagle shortly after his death, June 20, 1878, some facts 
relating to his professional career are given which seem too char- 



38 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

In June of 1817 Bryant received a letter from 
his father, then in Boston, informing him that Mr. 
Willard Phillips, an old Hampshire friend, had in- 

acteristic to be overlooked in any sketch of the events which 
shaped the ends of the maturing- poet and journalist. 

1 ' In the old times there were three grades of lawyers in Massa- 
chusetts : Attorneys of the Common Pleas, entitled to practice 
in that court, Attorneys of the Supreme Court, entitled to man- 
age cases in that tribunal, and Counselors of the Supreme Court, 
who alone had the right to argue cases before the full bench. 
Mr. Bryant's admission at Plymouth was to the Common Pleas: 
at the September term, 1817, he was admitted an attorney of the 
Supreme Court, and at the same term in 1819 as counselor ; Cal- 
vin Martin, Esq., of this town, and Charles A., afterwards Judge, 
Dewey, taking these legal degrees at the same time. Mr. Bry- 
ant was an active, learned, and rather fiery young lawyer. His 
name appears four or five times in the reports of the Supreme 
Court, which would indicate a practice somewhat greater than 
the majority of lawyers obtained in those days at his age. He 
was not particularly distinguished as a lawyer, but might have 
become so could he have overcome his disgust with a profession 
in which — then, even more than at present — law was not 
synonymous with justice. Finally he struck upon an experience 
which, if the well supported tradition of the bar is to be trusted, 
was so intolerable that he relinquished practice altogether. The 
case, that of Grotius Bloss vs. Augustus Tobey, of Alford, is re- 
ported in the second volume of Massachusetts Reports. 

" Mr. Bryant had obtained for Bloss a verdict of $500 for slander 
by Tobey, who appealed, having E. H. Mills, General Whiting, 
and Henry W. Dwight as counsel. At the law term of the Su- 
preme Court, in 1824, — Mr. Bryant having submitted a plain, 
common-sense argument in writing' during the vacation, — the 
case was decided against him, by an opinion which is thus sum- 
marized in the Reports : 

u ' Simply to burn one's store is not unlawful, and the words, 
"He burnt his store" or "there is no doubt in my mind that he 
burned his own store, he would not have got his goods insured if he 
had not meant to burn it" or a general allegation that the defend- 
ant charged the plaintiff with having willfully and maliciously 



THE BARRISTER. 39 

timated to him a desire that William Cullen would 
contribute to the " North American Eeview," then 
only two years old, of which Phillips was an asso- 
ciate editor. In communicating this invitation to 
his son, the doctor advised him to avail himself of 
it as a means of making himself favorably known 
at the state capital, " for those who contribute," 
he added, " are generally known to the literati in 
and about Boston." While William Cullen had 
Mr. Phillips's request under consideration his de- 
cision was curiously anticipated. Doctor Bryant 
having occasion one day to look through the draw- 
ers in his son's desk, which he had left behind him 
at Cummington, his eyes fell upon some manuscript 
verses, one of which proved to be the poem to 

burnt his own store, will not sustain an action for slander without 
a colloquium or averment setting forth such circumstances as would 
render such burning unlawful, and that the words were spoken 
of such circumstances ; and the want of such colloquium will 
not be cured by an innuendo.' 

' ' Thus, for a technical omission which did not in the least obscure 
the meaning of Mr. Bryant's declaration, his client's just rights 
were denied. That his claim to damage was just the court ad- 
mitted practically, Chief Justice Parsons prefacing its opinion, by 
remarking : ' It is with great regret, and not without much labor 
and research, to avoid this result, that we are obliged to arrest 
judgment.' 

" Mr. Bryant's just indignation against an administration of the 
law which compelled its servants to do acknowledged wrong to 
those who sought justice in its highest state tribunal led him to 
be ready to relinquish his profession at the first opportunity ; his 
feeling being probably intensified by an angry quarrel with Gen- 
eral Whiting concerning the costs, in which the disputants be- 
came so heated that it is remembered to this day by those who 
witnessed it. 



40 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

which he had given the name of " Thanatopsis " (a 
View of Death), and the other " An Inscription 
upon the Entrance to a Wood." He read them, and 
was so impressed by them that he hurried off at 
once to the house of a lady friend residing in the 
neighborhood, and thrusting the verses into her 
hand exclaimed, while tears ran down his cheeks, 
" Read them, they are Cullen's." 

Without communicating his intention to his son, 
the good doctor with as little delay as possible set 
out for Boston with these poems to show them to 
his friend Phillips. The result of his visit has 
already been recited. 

" Thanatopsis " appeared in the September num- 
ber of the "North American Review" for 1817. 
It was written by Bryant, Mr. Godwin tells us, 

" shortly after he was withdrawn from college, while re- 
siding with his parents at Cummington in the summer of 
1811, and before he had attained his eighteenth year. 

" There was no mistaking the quality of these verses. 
The stamp of genius was upon every line. No such 
verses had been made in America before. They soon 
found their way into the school books of the country. 
They were quoted from the pulpit and upon the hustings. 
Their gifted author had a national fame before he had 
a vote, and in due time ; Thanatopsis ' took the place 
which it still retains among the masterpieces of English 
didactic poetry." 

The poem which accompanied " Thanatopsis " 
and appeared in the same number of the " Review " 
under the title of " Fragment " is now known as 



THE BARRISTER. 41 

"An Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood." ! 
Though not sufficient, perhaps, to confer a rep- 
utation, it contributed largely to confirm and 
strengthen one already made. With two such 
poems as " Thanatopsis " and " The Fragment " 
sleeping in his desk, it may be assumed that dur- 
ing the six succeeding years, in which we have 
followed the young poet in his efforts to solve the 
more practical problems of life, he had not left his 
poetical talent wrapped in a napkin. On the con- 
trary, his muse was his comforter, counselor, and 
friend, with whom he uniformly took refuge from 
the perplexities, doubts, and discouragements of his 
professional life. She always sent him back to his 
daily task resigned, if not contented. The tone of 
his life at this period is reflected as in a mirror 
from his verses. The closing passage of his poem 
on " Green River " no doubt presents the state of 
feelings which was habitual with him, while, like 
Samson grinding in the prison house of the Phil- 
istines, he felt himself inexorably condemned for 
life to obscurity and "low thoughted care." 

" Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, 
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 
And mingle among the jostling crowd 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud, 
I often come to this quiet place 
To breathe the airs that ruffle my face, 
And gaze upon thee in silent dream ; 
For in thy lonely and lovely stream 
An image of that calm life appears 
That won my heart in my greener years." 

1 The first title was doubtless given it by the editors, the latter 
was subsequently given it by its author. 



42 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

When he journeyed on foot over the hills to 
Plainfield on the 15th of December, 1816, to see 
what inducements it offered him to commence there 
the practice of the profession to which he had just 
been licensed, he says in one of his letters that he 

1 felt " very forlorn and desolate." The world seemed 
to grow bigger and darker as he ascended, and 
his future more uncertain and desperate. The sun 
had already set, leaving behind it one of those 
brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often 
flood the New England skies, and, while pausing to 
contemplate the rosy splendor, with rapt admira- 
tion, a solitary bird made its winged way along 

* the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wan- 
derer until it was lost in the distance. He then 
went on with new strength and courage. When 
he reached the house where he was to stop for 
the night he immediately sat down and wrote the 
lines "To a Waterfowl," the concluding verse of 
which will perpetuate to future ages the lesson in 
faith which the scene had impressed upon him. 

" He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright." 1 

Bryant was only twenty-one years of age when he 
wrote this poem, which by many is thought to be 
the one they would choose to preserve, if all but 
one of his poems w r ere condemned to destruction. 2 

1 Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. i. p. 144. 

2 I have from Mr. Parke Godwin an incident which belongs to 



THE BARRISTER. 43 

There is something strangely pathetic in the fol- 
lowing lines written in 1815, and while still a 
student at home. 

" I cannot forget with -what tender devotion 
I worshiped the visions of verse and of fame ; 
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean, 
To my kindled emotions was wind over flame. 

" And deep were my musings in life's early blossom, 
Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long, 
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom, 
When o'er me descended the Spirit of Song. 

" Bright Visions ! I mixed with the world and ye faded. 
No longer your pure rural worshiper now ; 
In the haunts your continued presence pervaded 
Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow. 

the history of this poem. In a note to me dated Roslyn, Novem- 
ber 6, 1889, he says : — 

" Once when the late Matthew Arnold, with his family, was 
visiting the ever-hospitable country home of Mr. Charles But- 
ler, I happened to spend an evening there. In the course of it 
Mr. Arnold took up a volume of Mr. Bryant's poems from the 
table, and turning to me said, ' This is the American poet, fa- 
cile princeps ; ' and after a pause he continued : ' When I first 
heard of him, Hartley Coleridge (Ave were both lads then) came 
into my father's house one afternoon considerably excited and 
exclaimed, " Matt, do you want to hear the best short poem in 
the English language ? " "Faith, Hartley, I do," was my reply. 
He then read a poem u To a Waterfowl" in his best manner. 
And he was a good reader. As soon as he had done he asked, 
" What do you think of that ? " "I am not sure but you are right, 
Hartley; is that your father's ? " was my reply. "No," he re- 
joined, " father has written nothing like that." Some days after 
he might be heard muttering to himself, 

" ' " The desert and illimitable air, 

Lone wandering, but not lost." ' " 



44 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

" In the old mossy groves on the "breast of the mountains, 
In deep lonely glens where the waters complain, 
By the shade of the rock, hy the gush of the fountain, 
I seek your loved footsteps, hut seek them in vain. 

u Oh leave not forlorn and forever forsaken 
Your pupil and victim, to life and its tears; 
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken 
The glories ye showed to his earlier years." 

It is by no means the least singular thing about 
all these exquisite verses that they should have 
slept several years in their author's portfolio, 
neither read, seen, nor even heard of by any other 
living soul. His early " prentice " verses he was 
wont to read to his father and to other members of 
the family, but when " the Spirit of Song " de- 
scended upon him he became as shy as a maiden 
who first feels, not yet comprehending, the myste- 
ries of love. He no longer showed his verses even 
to his father, and but for the accident that be- 
trayed his secret no one can confidently say when, 
if ever, any of those verses would have seen the 
light. " Thanatopsis " was already six years old 
when it was printed ; "The Fragment," two years; 
"To a Waterfowl," three years; and "I cannot for- 
get w r ith what fervid devotion," eleven years. 

Such " patient waiting " is very rare, with young 
writers at least, but Bryant even then had no am- 
bition to be a mere newspaper poet. Whatever 
may have been his own estimate of his verses, he 
knew that time could not deprive them of any of 
their value. Whether they were vein ore or only 
washings he evidently had not fully settled in his 



THE BARRISTER. 45 

own mind when his father took some specimens 
to Boston to be subjected to the assay of public 
opinion. 

The reception of " Thanatopsis " in 1817 and 
of " To a Waterfowl " in 1818 removed whatever 
doubts lingered in his own or the public mind in 
regard either to the dignity or fertility of his muse, 
one of the immediate fruits of which was an invi- 
tation from Mr. Phillips 1 to enlist among the reg- 
ular contributors to the " Review," — an invitation 
of which he was only too happy to avail himself, 
for to his provincial vision it seemed the only gate 
through which he might at last find his way to 
that great world of which, like Rasselas, he had 
dreamed so much, but knew so little. 

A collection of American poetry by Solyman 
Browne w r as suggested to him for review. After 
much difficulty in finding a copy of this long for- 

1 In a letter to Dana from Cumniington, in September, 1S73, 
Bryant wrote : — 

u I thank you for telling" me so much about the last clays of our 
friend Phillips. He lived when a lad and a youth for some time 
in a house which I see from my door here, on a somewhat distant 
hillside, and while studying for college came to this house to take 
lessons from one of my father's medical pupils. The publication 
of the poems which you mention, through his agency, was prop- 
erly my introduction to the literary world, and led to my coming 
out with a little volume which you and Channing and he encour- 
aged me to publish, and which he so kindly reviewed in the 
North American. To me he was particularly kind — uncon- 
sciously so as it seemed ; it was apparently a kindness that he 
could not help. I am glad to learn that his last years were so 
tranquil and his death so easy, dropping like fruit, as Milton says, 
into his mother's lap." 



46 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

gotten book, which in a letter to his father he de- 
scribed as " poor stuff," he made it the basis of an 
essay on American poetry. It appeared in the 
" North American Review " for July, 1818. In 
it he passes in review all the writers of verse on 
this side of the Atlantic who had yet ventured 
into print, save some " whose passage to that obliv- 
ion, towards which, to the honor of our country 
they were hastening," he did not wish to interrupt. 
Those whose passage to oblivion he thought worthy 
of being interrupted, though at this day it is not so 
easy to see why, were the Rev. John Adams, whose 
verses showed " the dawning of an ambition of 
correctness and elegance ; " Joseph Green, whose 
poetical writings " have been admired for their 
humor and the playful ease of their composition ; " 
Francis Hopkinson, " whose humorous ballad en- 
titled * The Battle of the Kegs ' is in most of our 
memories ; " Dr. Church, whose " keen and forcible 
invectives are still recollected by his contempora- 
ries;" Philip Freneau, "whose occasional produc- 
tions, distinguished by a coarse strength of sarcasm 
and abounding with allusions to passing events, 
which are perhaps their greatest merit;" the 
Connecticut poets, Trumbull, D wight, Barlow, 
Humphreys, and Hopkins, in all whose productions 
" there is a pervading spirit of nationality and pa- 
triotism : a desire to reflect credit on the country 
to which they belonged, which seems, as much 
as individual ambition, to have prompted their 
efforts, and which at times gives a certain glow 



THE BARRISTER. 47 

and interest to their manner." Trumbull's Mc- 
Fingal is " a tolerably successful imitation of the 
great work of Butler," though the reviewer thinks 
"The Progress of Dullness " the more pleasing 
poem. He asks to be excused from feeling any high 
admiration for the poetry of Dr. Dwight, which is 
" modeled upon a manner altogether too artificial 
and mechanical." " Barlow's ' Hasty Pudding ' is 
a good specimen of mock heroic verse." "The plan 
of ' The Columbiad ' is utterly destitute of in- 
terest, and that which was at first sufficiently 
wearisome has become doubly so by being drawn 
out to its length." Humphreys's poems are in 
better taste than those of Barlow and Dwight, but 
" most happy when he aims at nothing beyond 
an elegant mediocrity." " Dr. Lemuel Hopkins's 
smaller poems have been praised for their wit. 
There is a coarseness, a want of polish in his style ; 
and his imagination, daring and original but unre- 
strained by a correct judgment, often wanders into 
absurdities and extravagances. Still if he had all 
the madness, he must be allowed to have possessed 
some of the inspiration of poetry." 

There is none of our American poetry on which 
the reviewer dwells with more pleasure than the 
charming remains of William Clifton, who died at 
the early age of twenty-seven. " His diction is re- 
fined to an unusual degree of purity, and through 
this lucid medium the creations of his elegant fancy 
appear with nothing to obscure their loveliness." 



48 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

The posthumous works of St. John Honey wood 
" contain many polished and nervous lines." Rob- 
ert Treat Paine " must be allowed to have possessed 
an active and fertile fancy. Yet more instances 
of the false sublime might, perhaps, be selected 
from the writings of this poet than from those of 
any other of equal talents who lived in the same 
period. The brilliancy of Paine's poetry is like 
the brilliancy of frostwork, cold and fantastic. 
Who can point out the passage in his works in 
which he speaks to the heart in its own language? 
He was a fine but misguided genius." 

After this charitable not to say generous esti- 
mate of his brother bards in America, he proceeds 
to denounce " the style of poetry then prevalent, 
as in too many instances tinged with a sickly and 
affected imitation of the peculiar manner of the 
late popular poets of England," and the servile 
habit of copying, which adopts the vocabulary 
of some favorite author, and apes the fashion of 
his sentences, and cramps and forces the ideas into 
a shape which they could not naturally have taken, 
and of which the only recommendation is not that 
it is most elegant or most striking, but that it 
bears some resemblance to the manner of him who 
is proposed as a model. " This way of writing," 
he continues, " has an air of poverty and meanness. 
It seems to indicate a paucity of reading as well as 
a perversion of taste, and it ever has been and 
ever will be the resort of those who are sensible 



THE BARRISTER. 49 

that their works need some factitious recommenda- 
tion to give them even a temporary popularity." 
"On the whole," he concludes, "there seems to be 
more good taste among those who read than among 
those who write poetry in our country." 

I have dwelt upon this paper longer than the 
present interest of the theme might seem to war- 
rant because it exhibits many of the moral and in- 
tellectual habits which made its author for more 
than half a century the most conspicuous man of 
letters in the country, among which were a mastery 
of his subject, temperance in judgment, moderation 
in statement, a patriotic interest in the adoption 
of sound standards of poetical merit, and withal a 
profound sense of responsibility for what he ven- 
tured to put in print. 

It is not much to say that no one now questions 
the substantial correctness of the opinions so mod- 
estly set forth in this paper. It is much, however, 
to say that no one had ventured to make himself 
responsible to the public for these opinions before. 
The editors of the " Review " highly approved of 
the tone of the article, and so encouraged him by 
their epistolary commendations that he now allowed 
himself to be relied upon as one of their favorite 
contributors. 

Nor does his professional character seem to 
have suffered in the eyes of his fellow-citizens by 
these infidelities, for only a few months after 
" To a Waterfowl " and the paper on early Amer- 
ican poetry appeared in the "North American 



50 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT, 

Review," he was chosen one of the tithing-men 
of the town 1 and soon afterwards town clerk. 2 
He held this office for five years, and until he left 
Great Barrington. If his duties bore any propor- 
tion to his salary, they could not have been very 
engrossing, for he discharged them all for the sum 
of just five dollars per annum. 

To these civic dignities the Governor of the 
State also added that of Justice of the Peace. 

Though few men who wrote so w^ll have ever 
written so much on the political problems of his 
time as Mr. Bryant, or did more by his professional 
and personal example to give dignity to political 
strife, these were the only public offices he ever 
filled. He had his eyes already fixed upon a 
crown even then slowly settling upon his head, to 
which official distinctions could add no lustre. 

About this time Bryant was called upon to sub- 
mit to the greatest trial that had ever yet befallen 
him, in the death of his father, 3 who had been to 
him from his earliest youth, in the largest accepta- 

1 March 9, 1819. 

2 "One may still see his records at Great Barrington, where 
they form an object of considerable curiosity to summer visitors. 
Written in a neat flexible hand, it is remarked that almost the 
only blot is where he registered his own marriage, and the only 
interlineation, where in giving the birth of his first child he had 
left out the name of the mother." — Godwin's Life, i. 159. 

3 Dr. Bryant died on the 20th of March, 1820, at the compara- 
tively early age of fifty-three. He inherited weak lungs, which 
could not endure any longer the wear and tear of a county phy- 
sician's life in the bleak and hilly region where Providence had 
fixed his home. 



THE BARRISTER. 51 

tion of the words, his counselor and friend. For 
this loss, however, Providence sent him what was 
destined to constitute as far as possible a compen- 
sation. Soon after his settlement in Great Bar- 
rington, he met a Miss Farrchild, who chanced to 
be visiting in the neighborhood. She left upon 
his heart at once an impression that proved to be 
durable. Death had recently deprived her of both 
her parents, and she was at this time the guest of 
one of her married sisters. She proved during 
the period of their courtship the inspiration of a 
good many poems, of which " Oh ! fairest of the 
rural maids " is the only one which for one reason 
or another the author has cared to print. They 
were married on the 11th of June, 1821, at the 
residence of Mrs. Henderson, the bride's sister. 
In announcing this event to his mother, he wrote : 
" I have not 4 played the fool and married the 
Ethiop for the jewel in her ear.' I looked only 
for goodness of heart, an ingenuous and affec- 
tionate disposition, a good understanding, etc., and 
the character of my wife is too frank and single- 
hearted to suffer me to fear that I may be disap- 
pointed. I do myself wrong. I did not look for 
these nor any other qualities, but they trapped me 
before I was aware, and now I am married in spite 
of myself." 1 

1 The following prayer, prepared for this occasion, was happily 
found among- Bryant's papers. Why their union was so remark- 
ably blessed finds in it at leatet a partial explanation : — 

"May Almighty God mercifully take care of our happiness 



52 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

In the following year, Bryant accepted an invi- 
tation to deliver the usual poetic address before 
the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College. 
It was for this occasion he wrote the poem of " The 
Ages," which was not only a very remarkable 
poem to be written by any young man of twenty- 
eight years, but which was conceded by those who 
heard it to be " the finest that had ever been spoken 
before the Phi Beta Kappa Society." So highly 
was it esteemed that nothing would do but he 
must consent to its publication, with whatever else 
he had done in a poetical way. The result was a 
volumette of forty -four pages, containing "The 
Ages," "To a Waterfowl," "Fragment from Si- 
monides," " The Inscription for the Entrance to a 
Wood," " The Yellow Violet," " The Song," " Green 
River," and " Thanatopsis." These eight poems 

here and hereafter. May we ever continue constant to each 
other, mindful of our mutual promises of attachment and troth. 
In due time, if it be the will of Providence, may we become more 
nearly connected with each other, and together may we lead a 
long, happy, and innocent life, without any diminution of affection 
till we die. May there never be any jealousy, distrust, coldness, 
or dissatisfaction between us, nor occasion for any, nothing but 
kindness, forbearance, mutual confidence, and attention to each 
other's happiness. And that we may be less unworthy of so 
great a blessing, may we be assisted to cultivate all the benign 
and charitable affections and offices not only toward each other, 
but toward our neighbors, the human race, and all the creatures 
of God- And in all things wherein we have done ill, may we 
properly repent our error, and may God forgive us and dispose us 
to do better. When at last we are called to render back the life 
we have received, may our deaths be peaceful, and may God take 
us to his bosom. 

il All which may He grant for the sake of the Messiah.'' 



THE BARRISTER, 53 

furnished forth the first " collection " of Bryant's 
poems, and though the volume was small and the 
poems few in number, they were enough, had he 
never written another line, to secure for him a 
permanent place among the poets of America. 

His visit to Boston and Cambridge did not 
contribute much to make Bryant and his profes- 
sion more cordial friends. He had been suddenly 
thrown into a society of the most distinguished 
and cultivated people of the period, — a society 
which conceded to him a reputation which required 
him to call none of them " master." Nor was 
there any one at that already famous literary cen- 
tre so distinguished that he could afford to be in- 
different to the young poet's acquaintance. The 
law had yielded him no such rewards. He was 
doubtless right in thinking it had none such in 
store for him. At all events, he acted upon that 
conviction. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ADVENTURER. 

1823-1829. 

Soon after Ms father's death, an appeal was 
made to Bryant on behalf of the Unitarian So- 
ciety of Massachusetts through Miss Catherine M. 
Sedgwick, of Stockbridge, to whom he was only 
known by reputation, to contribute to a collection 
of hymns that society had projected. Miss Sedg- 
wick, in giving an account of her mission to her 
brother Robert in New York, said, " He has a 
charming countenance, modest, but not bashful 
manners. I made him promise to come and see 
us shortly. He seemed gratified ; and if Mr. Sew- 
all has reason to be obliged to me (which I cer- 
tainly think he has), I am doubly obliged by the 
opportunity of securing the acquaintance of so in- 
teresting a man. 55 

The acquaintance thus casually formed was des- 
tined to exercise a curious influence upon Bryant's 
future career. At the time of his arrival in Great 
Barrington, he tells us in his Memoirs, " I had 
no acquaintance with the Sedgwick family. The 
youngest of them, Charles Sedgwick, a man of 



THE ADVENTURER. 55 

most genial and engaging manners and agreeable 
conversation as well as of great benevolence and 
worth, was a member of the Berkshire bar, and 
by him, a year or two afterwards, I was introduced 
to the others, who, from the first, seemed to take 
pleasure in being kind to me." 

At the instance of this amiable and accomplished 
family, Bryant was led seriously to consider the 
expediency of directing his steps toward New 
York rather than Boston, as his Land of Promise. 
Mr. Henry Sedgwick, Miss Sedgwick's elder 
brother, and one of the more prominent members 
of the New York bar, had been so impressed by 
what he had seen of Bryant's writings that he did 
not hesitate to recommend him to try his fortune 
as a man of letters in our commercial capital. 
" The time," he wrote, " is peculiarly propitious ; 
the Athenaeum, just instituted, is exciting a sort of 
literary rage, and it is proposed to set up a journal 
in connection with it. Besides, ' The Atlantic 
Magazine,' which has pined till recently, is begin- 
ning to revive in the hands of Henry J. Anderson, 
who has a taste or whim for editorship, and he un- 
questionably needs assistance. Bliss & White, his 
publishers, are liberal gentlemen ; they pay him 
five hundred dollars a year, and authorize an ex- 
penditure of five hundred dollars more." "Any 
deficiencies of salary, moreover," Mr. Sedgwick 
adds, " may be eked out by teaching foreigners, of 
whom there are many in New York, eager to learn 
our language and literature. In short, it would 



56 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

be strange if you could not succeed where every- 
body and everything succeeds." 

This would scarcely seem a very tempting pro- 
posal to a young man nowadays to quit the pro- 
fession to which he had been trained and the seat 
of whatever family and personal influence he pos- 
sessed ; but Bryant's aversion to the law had in- 
creased as his literary talents were more widely 
recognized, and he readily persuaded himself to 
make a prospecting tour to New York in the spring 
of 1824. His reception was seductive. He notes 
in his letters to his wife that he " dined at Robert 
Sedgwick's in company with Cooper, the novelist, 
Halleck, the author of * Fanny,' Sands, author of 
4 Yamoyden,' Johnson, the reporter of the Court of 
Appeals, and some other literary gentlemen ; " that 
one Sunday he heard " two sermons from Parson 
Ware, and very good ones, too," and on Tuesday 
had Sparks, who had succeeded to the editorship of 
the " North American Review," to dine with him. 
The Sedgwicks did all they could, and that meant 
a great deal, to make New York inviting to him. 
The result of his visit is easy to anticipate. Though 
upon his return he did not at once abandon his 
profession, his mind had evidently received during 
his absence such impressions as were sure to put 
an end to a prolonged residence at Great Bar- 
rington. This was apparent in the earnestness 
with which he now devoted himself to literary 
work. " The United States Literary Gazette " 
had been then recently established in Boston under 



THE ADVENTURER. 57 

the editorial management of Theophilus Parsons, 
a young lawyer of promise, afterward eminent as 
a writer and as a jurist. He solicited Bryant's 
aid. The application came at a propitious moment ; 
and during the first three years of the " Gazette's " 
existence, Bryant contributed to its pages from 
twenty to thirty poems, several of which rank 
among his best. 1 Of these pieces there was one 
which Mr. Godwin tells us had a deep and tender 

personal meaning. It is the " Sonnet to ," 

his sister, the beloved companion of his earlier 
years, but then in the last stages of the disease of 
which their father had died a few years before. 
She is remembered as a person of rare endow- 
ments and of the loveliest disposition. It was but 
natural he wrote that 

1 ' death should come 
Gently to one of gentle mould like thee, 
As light winds wandering through groves of hloom 
Detach the delicate blossoms from the tree." 

She died in the twenty-second year of her age, 
and thereafter the old familiar places wore a gloom 
for him which, perhaps, inclined him more will- 
ingly to the change of residence to which influ- 

1 These were " The Massacre of Scio," " RiZpah," u The Rivu- 
let," "March," "The Old Man's Funeral," "Sonnet to ," 

"An Indian Story," " Summer Wind/' " An Indian at the Bur- 
ial Place of his Fathers/' the song- called " The Lovers' Les- 
sons," " Monument Mountain," the " Hymn of the Waldenses," 
"After a Tempest/' "Autumn Woods," "Mutation," " Novem- 
ber," "Song of the Greek Amazon," " To a Cloud," " The Mur- 
dered Traveler," "Hymn to the North Star," "The Lapse of 
Time," " The Song of the Stars," and the " Forest Hymn." 



58 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

ences from every quarter seemed to be entreating 
him. To this cherished companion of his child- 
hood he erected one of the noblest monuments with 
which the memory of any American has yet been 
honored, in his lines on " The Death of the Flow- 
ers." No one is to be envied who can read the 
closing stanzas to-day without emotion. 

" The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 

Of wailing" winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. 
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead ; 
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. 
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay ; 
And from the wood-tops calls the crow through all the gloomy 
day. 

" Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang 
and stood, 
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? 
Alas ! they all are in their graves ; the gentle race of flowers 
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. 
The rain is falling where they lie ; but the cold November rain 
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. 

" The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago; 

And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow ; 
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, 
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, 
Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague 

on men, 
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, 
and glen. 

w And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will 

come, 
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their wiuter home ; 
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees 

are still, 
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, — 



THE ADVENTURER. 59 

The south-wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he 

bore, 
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. 

" And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, 
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side : 
In the cold, moist earth we laid her when the forests cast the 

leaf, 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief ; 
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, 
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers/' 

In " The Past," which at the time it was written 
he was inclined to think the best poem he had 
written, there occurs also a touching allusion to 
both his then recent bereavements. 

" All that of good and fair 
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time 

Shall then come forth to wear 
The glory and the beauty of its prime. 

" They have not perished, — no ! 
Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, 

Smiles, radiant long ago, 
And features, the great soul's apparent seat. 

" All shall come back ; each tie 
Of pure affection shall be knit again ; 

Alone shall Evil die, 
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 

" And then shall I behold 
Him by whose kind paternal side I sprang, 

And her who, still and cold, 
Fills the next grave, — the beautiful, the young.' ' 

When asked what compensation he expected for 
these poems, Bryant named two dollars for each, 
with which remuneration he was " abundantly sat- 



60 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

isfied." Fifty years later, any publisher in the 
land would gladly have paid him a hundred times 
that sum for them, — a pleasing evidence of the 
rapid growth both of the literary taste and wealth 
of the country. His publishers, with a juster 
sense of the value of his contributions than his 
modesty permitted him to entertain, had the grace 
to offer him two hundred dollars a year for an 
average of one hundred lines a month, with an ex- 
pression of their " profound regret that they were 
unable to offer a compensation more adequate." 
Small as this compensation seems to us, it had its 
influence in determining him to take all the risks 
and to trust to his pen for a livelihood. Accord- 
ingly in January of the year 1825, he revisited 
New York, where, in the course of the ensuing 
month, he undertook in connection with Henry J. 
Anderson the editorship of a monthly periodical, 
entitled the " New York Review and Athenaeum 
Magazine," the first number of which was an- 
nounced to appear in June. 

Mr. Bryant did not abandon his profession — 
if the law can fairly be said to have ever been his 
profession — hastily or inconsiderately ; nor did 
he trust himself to the precarious resources of his 
pen with any chimerical expectations. No one 
knew better than he how limited was the market 
at that time for such literary work as he was will- 
ing and able to execute. He was animated solely 
by a desire to exchange an uncongenial employ- 
ment for a congenial one. The meanest liveli- 



THE ADVENTURER. 61 

hood achieved by his pen in the metropolis was 
more agreeable to him than affluence as a village 
attorney. 

" I have given up my profession, which was a 
shabby one," he wrote about this time to his life- 
long friend Dana, " and I am not altogether cer- 
tain that I have got into a better. Bliss & White, 
however, the publishers of the 'New York Re- 
view,' employ me, which at present will be a liveli- 
hood, and a livelihood is all I got from the law." 
In another letter to Dana, written a few weeks 
later, he adds, " I do not know how long my con- 
nection with this work will continue. My salary 
is one thousand dollars ; no great sum, to be sure, 
but it is twice what I got by my practice in the 
country. Besides, my dislike for my profession 
was augmenting daily, and my residence in Great 
Barrington, in consequence of innumerable quar- 
rels and factions which were springing up every 
day among an extremely excitable and not very 
enlightened population, had become quite dis- 
agreeable to me. It cost me more pain and per- 
plexity than it was worth to live on friendly terms 
with my neighbors ; and, not having, as I flatter 
myself, any great taste for contention, I made up 
my mind to get out of it as soon as I could and 
come to this great city, where, if it w r as my lot to 
starve, I might starve peaceably and quietly. The 
business of sitting in judgment on books as they 
come out is not the literary employment most to 
my taste, nor that for which I am best fitted, but 



62 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

it affords ine, for the present, a certain compensa- 
tion." 

In the latter part of June, he gives a yet more 
emphatic expression to his feelings in a letter to 
Mrs. Bryant, whom, in this experimental stage of 
his career, he had not ventured to expose to the 
heats of summer in New York : " Notwithstand- 
ing the heat, the noise, and the unpleasant odors of 
the city, I think that if you and Frances were with 
me I should pass my time here much more pleas- 
antly than at Great Barrington. I am obliged to 
be pretty industrious, it is true, but that is well 
enough. In the mean time I am not plagued with 
the disagreeable, disgusting drudgery of the law ; 
and, what is still better, am aloof from those mis- 
erable feuds and wranglings that make Great Bar- 
rington an unpleasant residence, even to him who 
tries every method in his power to avoid them." 

It is apparent from these letters that Bryant's 
quarrel was not so much with the profession of the 
law as with the conditions under which he had been 
required to pursue it. Had not Providence given 
him wings with which to fly to more congenial 
spheres of activity, there is no reason to doubt that 
he would have risen to eminence in some depart- 
ment of that profession. He had every faculty, 
both moral and intellectual, for acquiring and de- 
serving the confidence of clients. Like the poet 
Cowper, with whom he had more points of resem- 
blance than with any other English poet, the shy- 
ness and delicacy of his nature disinclined him to 



THE ADVENTURER. 63 

the duties of a barrister; but, unlike Cowper, his 
shyness was not so morbid, while his courage and 
conscientiousness would have sustained him in the 
discharge of any duty which his profession might 
impose. Then there are departments of the profes- 
sion in which his great talents and virtues would 
have proved most effective without doing any vio- 
lence to his singularly acute and refined sensibili- 
ties ; not perhaps in Great Barrington, nor indeed 
in any other country village, for no country vil- 
lage could have long detained such a lawyer as 
Bryant would have made. Had his father's 
means permitted him to study and practice his 
profession in Boston, he probably would have ad- 
hered to it for life, and now be known, and only 
known, to us as having once been a leading mem- 
ber of the Massachusetts bar. Here again the 
audax paupertas providentially intervened and 
said, " No, not a lawyer. There are a plenty of 
men who can become leading members of the 
Massachusetts bar, but I have work for you in 
another sphere for which there is no one else at 
present equally fitted." 

As Bryant had staked everything upon his New 
York venture, he led an anxious as well as labori- 
ous life for the next few years. But he had youth 
and its inexhaustible faith to sustain him ; he had 
congenial if not very remunerative employment ; 
and in Cooper and Verplanck and Anderson and 
Sands and William Ware he had the society of 
friends, whose devotion to him only terminated 



64 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

with their lives. Though his share of work on the 
" Review " was quite enough for him, it did not 
prevent his availing himself of every opportunity 
of putting down new roots in the community to 
which he had been transferred. In the autumn of 
1825 he accepted an invitation from the Athenaeum 
Society to deliver some lectures on English poetry. 
Though elementary in their scope and prepared 
for a temporary forum, these lectures, four in 
number, are still worth reading. While deliver- 
ing these discourses, Bryant was appointed a pro- 
fessor in one of the schools organized under the 
auspices of the National Academy of the Arts of 
Design, then recently established. He read to his 
classes five lectures on the subject of Mythology, 
in December, 1827, which proved so acceptable 
that he was called upon to repeat them in each of 
the three or four succeeding years. To the " Re- 
view " he was also the principal contributor both 
in prose and verse, and among his poetical contri- 
butions, " The Song of Pitcairn's Island,'' " Lines 
on Revisiting the Country," " I cannot forget," 
" The Death of the Flowers," and " Hymns to 
Death," are now as much read, perhaps, as any 
verses he ever wrote. Halleck's " Marco Bozzaris," 
" Burns," " Wyoming," and " Connecticut," the 
poems to which he owed his fame, also first ap- 
peared in the " Review." But in spite of these 
and all its other attractions it did not thrive, and 
Bryant's prospects at the close of his first year's 
experience as "a literary adventurer," as he 



THE ADVENTURER. 65 

styled himself, were anything but encouraging. 
Various expedients were resorted to, but in vain, 
to revive the drooping fortunes of the " Review." 
In March, 1826, it and " The New York Literary 
Gazette " were united under the name of " The 
New York Literary Gazette or American Athe- 
naeum." In July following this conglomerate was 
united with the " United States Gazette " of Bos- 
ton, taking the title of the " United States Review 
and Literary Gazette," under the joint editorship 
of James G. Carter in Boston and Bryant in New 
York. Bryant was allowed a quarter ownership, 
five hundred dollars a year salary, and a prospec- 
tive increase contingent upon the increase of sub- 
scribers. But these changes were only changes in 
name ; the subscribers did not increase, and the 
divided editorial control proved anything but an 
advantage. The horizon seemed to be shutting in 
with darkness all around him. He was a young 
man ; he had a wife and child dependent upon him ; 
he had embarked in a new profession among 
strangers in a strange city. Like a castaway in 
the wide ocean, the more he exerted himself the 
more rapidly he exhausted his strength, with no 
evidence apparent that his prospects of succor were 
improving. His confidence in the sustaining power 
of his pen was so shaken that he applied for and 
obtained a license to practice law in the courts of 
New York, in anticipation of being again obliged 

1 l to drudge for the dregs of men, 
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 



66 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

And mingle among" the jostling crowd 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud." 

Whatever Bryant strongly felt was pretty sure, 
sooner or later, to find expression in verse, and it 
was under the depressing influences about him that 
he wrote the following lines, which he entitled 
" The Journey of Life." 

" Beneath the waning moon I walk at night, 

And muse on human life — for all around 
Are dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight, 

And pitfalls lurk in shade along the ground, 
And broken gleams of brightness here and there 
Glance through, and leave unwarmed, the death-like air. 

" The trampled earth returns a sound of fear — 

A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs ; 
And lights, that tell of cheerful homes, appear 

Far off, and die like hope amid the glooms. 
A mournful wind across the landscape flies, 
And the white atmosphere is full of sighs. 

" And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on, 
Watching the stars that roll the hours away, 
Till the faint light that guides me now is gone, 

And, like another life, the glorious day 
Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height, 
With warmth and certainty and boundless light." 

When read by the light of the circumstances in 
which they were written, these lines are very af- 
fecting, and yet more than with their pathos one 
is impressed with the unfaltering faith with which 
they are eloquent. There is no repining, no at- 
tempt to shield his self-love by holding Providence 
responsible for his hardships ; still less do we find 
there any sign of surrender or of despair, but the 



THE ADVENTURER. 67 

same pious trust in the Divine guidance which a 
dozen years before had sustained him at another 
crisis in his career, and which found such lofty- 
expression in the lines "To a Waterfowl." In 
perusing these verses, the classical student can 
hardly fail to be reminded of the Gentile but not 
unchristian faith revealed in the following lines of 
the great lyric poet of pagan Rome : — 

* ' Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis 
Dormirem et ursis ; ut premerer sacra 
Lauroque collataque myrto, 
Non sine Dis animosus infans." 1 

Bryant's trust in Providence was happily justi- 
fied, as it always is to those who " hold out to the 
end." When his situation seemed most desperate, 
he was invited to assist in the editorship of the 
"New York Evening Post." This paper, then 
owned by William Coleman and Michael Burnham, 
had already acquired the commanding position in 
the country which it still maintains, and was a val- 
uable property. Bryant's engagement at first was 
temporary. The place had been offered to his 
friend Dana, from whom, however, no answer had 
been received. Dana ultimately declined. This 
gave Biyant for the first time in his life a toler- 
ably firm footing in an employment infinitely more 

1 Horace, Lib. III. Carmen IV. Thus rendered by Dean 
Milman : — 

' ' From the black viper safe and prowling bear, 
Sweet slept I, strewn with sacred leaves 
And myrtle twigs — bold child 

Not of the Gods unwatched." 



68 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

congenial than that which he had abandoned, and 
fairly remunerative. 

While serving what may be termed his appren- 
ticeship as a journalist, Bryant continued his labors 
on the " Review" until it paid the debt of nature, 
if no other. 1 He then joined his friends Verplanck 
and Sands in editing an annual called the " Talis- 
man." The first one appeared in 1828. It was 
succeeded by another in 1829, and a third in 1830, 
when it was abandoned by its editors for more en- 
grossing and profitable employment. 2 

With permanence of position Bryant was also 
wise and fortunate enough to acquire an interest 
in the property of the ''Evening Post." 

1 Bryant's poetical contributions to the Review were, " October," 
"The Damsel of Pern," "The African Chief, 1 ' "Spring- in 
Town," "The Gladness of Nature," "The Greek Partisan," 
"The Two Graves," and "The Conjunction of Jupiter and 
Venus." 

2 Bryant's poetical contributions to the Talisman were, "A 
Scene on the Banks of the Hudson," "The Hurricane," "Wil- 
liam Tell," "Innocent Child and Snow-white Flower," "The 
Close of Autumn," "To the Past," "The Hunter's Serenade," 
" The Greek Boy," " To the Evening Wind," " Love and Folly," 
" The Siesta," " Romero," " To the River Arve," ' To the Painter 
Cole," and "Eva," including "The Alcayde of Molina," and 
"The Death of Aliatar." It is a proof how little the Review 
had been known that two or three of these were republished from 
it without detection. His prose pieces were, "An Adventure in 
the East Indies," "The Cascade of Melsingah," "Recollections 
of the South of Spain," " Moriscan Romances," "Story of the 
Island of Cuba," "The Indian Spring," "The Whirlwind," 
"Early Spanish Poetry," " Phanette des Gautelmes," "The 
Marriage Blunder," and parts of the "Devil's Pulpit" and 
" Reminiscences of New York." 



THE ADVENTURER. 69 

Writing to Dana in February, 1829, he said, " I 
am a small proprietor in the establishment, and am 
a gainer by the arrangement. It will afford me a 
comfortable livelihood after I have paid for the 
eighth part, which is the amount of my share. I 
do not like politics any better than you do ; but 
they get only my mornings, and you know politics 
and a bellyful are better than poetry and starva- 
tion." 

Only five months after this letter was written 
Mr. Coleman, the editor-in-chief and proprietor^ 
died, and Bryant was immediately promoted to his 
seat. With this promotion, also, he acquired an 
additional interest in the property, 1 of which he 
continued the proprietor during the remainder of 
his life, about half a century. 

1 For this purpose I am told that Henry Sedgwick lent him 
two thousand dollars. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE JOURNALIST. 

When Bryant entered the office of the " Even- 
ing Post," he embarked in a profession which was 
destined to absorb his best energies for the remain- 
ing years of a long life. For more than half of 
our national existence he w r as the directing mind 
of that journal. During all this long period he 
contracted no other business engagements, he was 
never officially engaged in the administration of 
any other financial or industrial enterprise, nor 
did he ever accept any political office. And yet I 
do not recall the name of any other American, save 
Dr. Franklin, who for as long a period w r as so 
unremittingly and effectively occupied in shaping 
public opinion, nor one who ever gave so many 
hours of conscientious thought to questions involv- 
ing so exclusively the interests and welfare of man- 
kind. Nowhere else in our literature, I believe, 
can be found such a continuous, complete, and sat- 
isfactory record of the growth and expansion of 
political thought in the United States as in the 
columns of the " Evening Post " during the first 
fifty years of Bryant's connection with it. It would 
be difficult to name any subject of general concern 



THE JOURNALIST. 71 

that fell properly within the domain of secular 
journalism during that period that he did not deal 
with, and in a way to deserve, and usually to com- 
mand, the respectful attention even of those who 
were not prepared to accept all his conclusions. 

Journalism when Bryant entered the profes- 
sion was as little like the journalism of 1889 as 
Jason's fifty-oared craft " Argo" was like a mod- 
ern steam packet. The commercial value of news 
merely as news to the daily press was as much 
undervalued as anthracite coal for fuel, or elec- 
tricity for light. The newspaper was usually estab- 
lished in the interest of some prominent party 
leader, who fought his battles in its columns. The 
editor was more or less his party's mouthpiece, 
and the readers consulted its columns mainly for 
its political indications. The modern reporter was 
yet in the chrysalis stage of existence, while the 
" interviewer " was as one of those remote stars, 
the light of which had not yet reached our planet. 
A weekly packet with the news in a file of London 
papers, condensed into a few paragraphs, supplied 
all the information from the outside world for 
which there seemed to be any demand, while local 
news was limited pretty much to such items as 
friends of the editor or interested parties might 
take the trouble to communicate. The evolution 
or transformation of our journalism from its stage 
of organism to the newspaper proper was of a later 
date, and was due to the absence rather than to the 
presence of qualities from which success could then 



72 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

have been predicated. Lacking the literary train- 
ing and accomplishment of an effective writer, the 
late James Gordon Bennett had the sagacity to find 
in news and gossip a cheap substitute for brilliant 
leaders. These features of the " Herald " news- 
paper, which he founded, attracted readers from the 
larger class who had only a secondary interest in 
politics, and placed his journal upon an independ- 
ent financial footing which delivered it from the 
thrall of scheming politicians. It was, I believe, 
the first politically independent secular journal 
published in the United States. In proportion as 
the daily prints, following the example of the 
"Herald," have become in fact as well as in name 
newspapers, have they become representatives of 
the whole people, instead of being merely the rep- 
resentatives of political parties and factions. 

For the first twenty years of his connection with 
the " Evening Post," Bryant had but one perma- 
nent assistant in his office, a scanty report of the 
shipping and financial intelligence being supplied 
to the " Evening Post " in common with some 
other papers, each bearing its proportion of the 
expense. The attraction and influence of the pa- 
per depended mainly upon its editorials, which 
rarely occupied more than a column. 

As the " Evening Post " was published in the 
afternoon, the work on it had to begin at an early 
hour of the morning. During the first forty years 
of his editorial life, it was a rare thing for Mr. 
Bryant, if in town, not to be found at his desk 



THE JOURNALIST. 73 

before eight o'clock in the morning. He was not 
a fluent nor a very prolific writer. Beside his 
natural fastidiousness, he had a literary reputation 
to sustain, with which he never allowed himself to 
trifle. His manuscripts, as well as his proofs, were 
commonly so disfigured by corrections as to be 
read with difficulty even by those familiar with his 
script. 

Good poets have usually been masters of a supe- 
rior prose style. Bryant was no exception. Though 
he neither sought nor expected fame from his 
prose, he was careful to print nothing that could 
in any way compromise his reputation as a poet. 
As a consequence, in all his contributions to his 
paper, I doubt if as many erroneous or defective 
forms of expression can be found as in the first ten 
numbers of the " Spectator." He never allowed 
slang or affectations of expression of any kind a 
place in its columns, nor would he allow the clients 
of the " Evening Post " ever to be described or 
recognized as " patrons." In a letter to a young 
man who had asked his opinion of an article he 
had written, he has given the following brief 
exposition of what he regarded as the rudimen- 
tary principles of good writing for the periodical 
press : — • 

"I observe that you have used several French 
expressions in your letter. I think if you will 
study the English language, that you will find it 
capable of expressing all the ideas you may have. 
I have always found it so, and in all that I have 



74 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

written I do not recall an instance where I was 
tempted to use a foreign word but that, on search- 
ing, I have found a better one in my own language. 

44 Be simple, unaffected ; be honest in your 
speaking and writing. Never use a long word 
where a short one will do as well. 

" Call a spade by its name, not a well-known ob- 
long instrument of manual labor ; let a home be a 
home, and not a residence ; a place, not a locality, 
and so on of the rest. When a short word will 
do, you will always lose by a long one ; you lose in 
clearness, you lose in honest expression of mean- 
ing, and, in the estimation of all men who are ca- 
pable of judging, you lose in reputation for ability. 

44 The only true way to shine, even in this false 
world, is to be modest and unassuming. False- 
hood may be a thick crust, but in the course of 
time Truth will find a place to break through. 
Elegance of language may not be in the power of 
us all, but simplicity and straightforwardness are." 

He rarely quoted, in support of his own opin- 
ions, or for a more effective statement of them ; 
and, as a rule, he never quoted in a foreign tongue. 
If he did by chance, it was apt to be with an 
apology. 

Bryant's prose, like his poetry, was always clear. 
No one could mistake his meaning, nor have the 
least difficulty in gathering it from his language. 
Nor did he ever try to leave a different impres- 
sion from that which his words strictly imported. 
Though master of a genial humor as well as of a 



THE JOURNALIST. 75 

refined irony, he never trifled with serious matters, 
nor with his readers. He never made sport of the 
calamities or afflictions even of the most depraved, 
taught both by what nature discloses and by what 
she conceals, 

" Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.' ' 

He rigorously eschewed the discussion of religious 
topics, especially those of a controverted character. 
He never could be beguiled into personal contro- 
versy, insisting that every line of a newspaper be- 
longed to the public that paid for it, and could not 
honestly be perverted to the gratification of the 
vanity or spite or self-sufficiency of its editors. 
How much Bryant's example has had to do with 
the marvelous improvements in the literary quality 
and moral tone which distinguishes the journalism 
of to-day from that which prevailed during the 
first quarter of the century is only known to those 
who have been witnesses of the change, and they 
will soon have all passed away. The number of 
such as are disposed to disinter the genius and 
professional virtues which are sepulchred in the 
files of an old newspaper is very limited. Nor 
would Bryant have had it otherwise, for he had no 
desire to be remembered as a " journalist," pro- 
foundly as he was interested in all he sought to 
accomplish as such for human society. 

Bryant had one peculiarity which would hardly 
have been so conspicuous in any other profession. 
He rarely if ever gave advice, and, unless in his 



76 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

domestic circle, of which I cannot speak, never un- 
asked. Even the juniors in his office, the " 'pren- 
tice hands " of his staff, had to study their profes- 
sion from his example, not from his precepts. His 
reasons for this can only be conjectured. He may 
have felt with Shaftesbury that " that which we 
call ' giving advice ' w r as properly taking an occa- 
sion to show our wisdom at another's expense." A 
gentleman who was associated with him many years 
in the management of the " Evening Post," com- 
menting upon this peculiarity, remarked : — 

" When I entered the office I had had some little prac- 
tice as a writer for magazines, such as is common to most 
young men of strong literary tastes, but I had had no ex- 
perience in journalism proper. As a matter of course I 
was continually doing things I ought not to have done, 
and leaving undone things I ought to have done. Bryant 
never rebuked me ; he never criticised me. In looking 
over my proofs he would occasionally say, ' Had not this 
word better be changed for that or the other ? Does that 
phrase express all or more than you mean, or as clearly 
as you wish it to ? ' Even this mode of correction was 
very rare. As I became more familiar with my duties, 
and compared my own work with his, I realized how often 
I must have offended ; how much I must have written that 
he would not have written ; how many canons of the 
master I must have violated, and in my hours of soli- 
tary meditation often wondered what could be the secret 
of his silence and forbearance. My heart once almost 
ceased to beat when the suspicion crossed my mind that 
he thought criticism and instruction would be wasted 
upon me. But just in proportion to his tolerance was my 



THE JOURNALIST. 77 

vigilance in searching for the difference between his work 
and mine, and as far and as fast as possible were my 
efforts to diminish their number. Before long I became 
sensible that he had pursued the wiser course, and that I 
improved much faster by being driven for guidance to his 
example, which, like the shadow of St. Peter, exerted a 
healing influence ujjoii whomsoever it fell, than if he had 
begun with me by pointing out my errors and deficiencies, 
which would probably have had the effect either of mak- 
ing me timid and of discouraging me, or of leaving me to 
suppose that all he did not censure was satisfactory. Of 
course all his literary standards were at least as much 
higher than mine as he was my senior. He knew, there- 
fore, that he could not impose them successfully upon 
me then, but that I must, as far as in me lay, grow to 
them, as the acorn grows to be an oak, and that the at- 
tempt would only result either in rebellion or in convert- 
ing me into a machine. The respect I thus acquired for 
his example, not only as a journalist, but for his standards 
in every relation in life, grew upon me steadily while 
our professional association lasted, so that, for years after 
it ceased, when in perplexing situations and in doubt 
about what it was becoming and proper for me to do or 
to leave undone, I found myself instinctively and habit- 
ually asking myself, ' What would Bryant do in my sit- 
uation ? ' And it almost invariably happened that when 
subjected to this test all my doubts promptly vanished. 
I had no hesitation in doing what I should not have 
been surprised to see him do, while I shrank from any- 
thing which would have surprised me if done by him. I 
have known many wise and excellent men in my life, 
but no one whose example pursued me so faithfully or 
with any such results. And I trust I have learned from 



78 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

him to have a more just appreciation of the relative 
importance of example and advice." 

Though he had been trained in the strictest prin- 
ciples of New England Federalism, Bryant found, 
when he came to be clothed with the responsibilities 
of a leader and guide, that his controlling sympa- 
thies and instincts were with the Democratic party. 
Jackson was President. His battle with nullifica- 
tion in the South, and with the Bank of the United 
States, and his vetoes of road, river, and harbor 
bills, as being special or local instead of national 
in their bearing, commanded his cordial approval. 
He early embraced the conviction which lies at the 
foundation of the Democratic polity, not that that 
government is best that governs least, but that that 
government is best which shall limit its functions 
most completely to those of an effective police in 
keeping every man's hand off of every other man, 
and off of his property. Whenever government 
transcended these functions, he thought it required 
close watching, with all the presumptions against 
it. This conviction led him early to question the 
wisdom of granting special charters to banks ; to 
denounce the inspection, conspiracy, and usury 
laws ; to favor the removal of all legislative re- 
strictions upon commerce, and to provide for the 
expenses of government by a strictly revenue 
tariff. He assented to and effectively supported 
the tariff of 1846, framed upon the principle enun- 
ciated by Governor Silas Wright, — a tariff for 
revenue, with incidental protection. The formula 



TEE JOURNALIST. 79 

would have pleased hini better with the " incidental 
protection " left out. 

Whenever he had occasion to speak of slavery, he 
never was its apologist, nor did he ever neglect an 
opportunity of rendering any practical assistance 
to the cause of emancipation ; and when the ques- 
tion of extending the territory afflicted with slav- 
ery arose, no journal in the country labored more 
or suffered more in resisting such extension. He 
never advocated the abolition of slavery by the 
federal government until it became justifiable 
and expedient as a war measure. The courts and 
the laws, if not the Constitution, had placed slavery 
within the States under the protection of the Con- 
stitution in the judgment of the leading states- 
men of all parties. Mr. Bryant acquiesced in this 
judgment as he acquiesced in many other national 
abuses which he saw no means of remedying. But 
when the census of 1860 revealed to the country 
the fact that the political ascendency of the slave- 
holding States had departed, and that the non- 
slaveholding States had a majority in both houses 
of Congress ; and when, for the purpose of restor- 
ing such ascendency, they endeavored to carry slav- 
ery into all the vast unsettled territories of the 
Northwest, the " Evening Post " did not hesitate 
to take the attitude of unhesitating and uncom- 
promising opposition, preferring that the question 
should be settled by the dread arbitrament of war 
to any responsibility for the surrender of one more 
inch of American soil to be tilled bv the hands of 



80 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

bondmen. War ensued, and while supporting the 
government in its prosecution with all the vigor of 
his pen and the weight of his character, true to 
his Democratic instincts, he denounced the financial 
policy of the government by which its paper prom- 
ises w r ere made a lawful tender in discharge of its 
pecuniary obligations. 

When Mr. Lincoln, in January, 1863, issued his 
proclamation of freedom to the slaves in certain 
States which persisted in their insurrection against 
the government, Bryant, while disposed to accept 
it with gratitude as a step in the right direction, 
found it less comprehensive and definite in its 
terms than he thought the occasion called for. He 
did not believe in gradual emancipation as a meas- 
ure suited to the emergencies of flagrant war. In 
a speech which he made at a meeting held in behalf 
of the loyalists of Missouri who were calling upon 
the nation to protect them, he portrayed the follies 
of gradual emancipation in terms as nearly ap- 
proaching to genuine eloquence, probably, as he 
ever reached. 

" Gradual emancipation ! " he exclaimed. " Have 
we not suffered enough from slavery without keep- 
ing it any longer ? Has not blood enough been 
shed? My friends, if a child of yours were to 
fall into the fire, would you pull him out gradu- 
ally ? If he were to swallow a dose of laudanum 
sufficient to cause speedy death, and a stomach 
pump was at hand, would you draw the poison 
out by degrees ? If your house were on fire, would 



THE JOURNALIST. 81 

you put it out piecemeal ? And yet there are 
men who talk of gradual emancipation by force of 
ancient habit, and there are men in the Slave 
States who make of slavery a sort of idol which 
they are unwilling to part with ; which, if it must 
be removed, they would prefer to see removed after 
a lapse of time and tender leave-takings. 

" Slavery is a foul and monstrous idol, a Jugger- 
naut under which thousands are crushed to death ; 
it is a Moloch for whom the children of the land 
pass through fire. Must we consent that the num- 
ber of the victims shall be diminished gradually ? 
If there are a thousand victims this year, are you 
willing that nine hundred shall be sacrificed next 
year, and eight hundred the next, and so on until 
after the lapse of ten years it shall cease ? No, 
my friends, let us hurl the grim image from its 
pedestal. Down with it to the ground. Dash it 
to fragments ; trample it in the dust. Grind it to 
powder as the prophets of old commanded that 
the graven images of the Hebrew idolaters should 
be ground, and in that state scatter it to the four 
winds and strew it upon the waters, that no human 
hand shall ever again gather up the accursed atoms 
and mould them into an image to be worshiped 
again with human sacrifice." 

When the war had terminated, it was the deliv- 
erance of the nation from all complicity with slav- 
ery that he regarded as its great and compensating 
result. 

A few weeks after peace was reestablished, his 



82 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

feelings of patriotic pride and satisfaction over- 
flowed in a letter of congratulation to Miss Sedg- 
wick, in the course of which he said, "Never, 
I think, was any great moral lesson so powerfully 
inculcated by political history. What the critics 
call poetic justice has been as perfectly accom- 
plished as it could have been in any imaginary 
series of events. 

"When I think of this great conflict and its 
great issues, my mind reverts to the grand imagery 
of the Apocalypse — to the visions in which the 
messengers of God came down to do his bidding 
among the nations, to reap the earth, ripe for the 
harvest, and gather the spoil of the vineyards; 
to tread the winepress till it flows over far and 
wide with blood ; to pour out the phials of God's 
judgments upon the earth and turn its rivers into 
blood ; and, finally, to bind the dragon and thrust 
him down into the bottomless pit. 

" Neither you nor I thought, until this war be- 
gan, that slavery would disappear from our coun- 
try until more than one generation had passed 
away. Yet a greater than man has taken the work 
in hand, and it is done in four years. It is a great 
thing to have lived long enough to have seen this 
mighty evil wrenched up from our soil by the roots 
and thrown into the flames." 

The war over, Bryant directed all his influence 
and effort to the reparation of the graver financial 
errors of the government, wdiich the exigencies of 
the preceding five years had, in the judgment of 



THE JOURNALIST. 83 

patriots, palliated if not excused. He insisted 
upon the immediate repeal of the "legal tender 
act ; " he exposed and denounced the schemes which 
were rife, especially in the Western and Southern 
States, for the increase of inconvertible currency, 
then popularly known as " soft money ; " and he 
urged with unwonted vehemence the liberation of 
the industries and commerce of the country from 
the paralyzing burdens of what is euphuistically 
termed " a war tariff," and the accumulation in 
the treasury of wealth unnecessarily withdrawn 
from the channels of productive industry. 

On the brief chart of Bryant's career which we 
are fashioning, it is only possible to set down the 
headlands of the route by which he journeyed. The 
topics we have enumerated constitute but a very 
inconsiderable portion of those which he had occa- 
sion to treat in the course of his long professional 
career, but they show the single-eyed, large-minded, 
and patriotic spirit with which he dealt with all 
public questions. It is doubtful if so wise, com- 
prehensive, and edifying a system of political ethics 
as might be compiled from Mr. Bryant's editorial 
contributions to the " Evening Post " can be found 
elsewhere in the literature of our own or of any 
other country. I do not believe any man ever sat 
down to the discharge of a professional duty with a 
more resolute determination to exclude the influ- 
ence of personal or selfish considerations. He re- 
peatedly felt himself constrained to take the unpop- 
lar side on important public questions. His support 



84 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

of General Jackson in his war against the United 
States Bank aroused a feeling against his paper 
among the merchants of New York, upon whom 
its existence largely depended, which no one of 
much less weight of personal character and author- 
ity could have surmounted. The attitude of his 
journal upon the slavery question also stripped its 
columns of most of its advertisements, and brought 
it to the verge of bankruptcy. 

During the riots of 1863, it enjoyed the distinc- 
tion of being threatened by a reactionary mob, and 
had not special measures of defense been season- 
ably taken, it would doubtless have been sacked. 1 
His firmness, his fidelity to principle, his uncalcu- 
lating devotion to the greatest good of the greatest 
number, and the dignified and temperate way in 
which he was accustomed to commend his views to 
the public were not wasted, though at times they 
seemed to contribute more to deplete than replen- 
ish his exchequer. If many from that day turned 

1 The following note was sent in reply to one from his steward, 
Mr. Cline, informing- him that some one in the cars had been 
overheard to say that " Bryant's house would have to blaze." 

Office of the Evening Post. 
New York, July 18, 1863. 

Dear Sir, — Mr. Henderson has just shown me your letter. 
Four revolvers and ammunition will be sent down to you this even- 
ing-. Mr. Godwin and Bryant (his grandson) know how they are 
to be used, if you and others about you do not. You will, I 
hope, be discreet in what you say, and though not believing* too 
much of what is reported, be ready for the worst. If John and 
Jacob are willing" to aid in the defense of the house, you may re- 
munerate them. As to Thomas, I am sure I may depend on him 
as one not easily frightened. 



THE JOURNALIST. 85 

back from following* him, there was probably no 
man in the whole country who was personally more 
respected. Even in Tammany Hall, where his 
paper and political doctrines were publicly de- 
nounced, a quotation from his poems by its speak- 
ers would be received with rounds of applause. 

During the earlier and less prosperous portions 
of his editorial career, the poet and the journalist 
wrestled with each other in the affections of Bryant 
like Esau and Jacob in the womb of Rebecca. 
There was probably no time during the first twenty 
years of his connection with the " Evening Post " 
that he would not gladly have abandoned all his 
interests in the property for half of what he re- 
ceived from it later in a single year. This feeling 
nearly mastered him during the bank war and the 
monetary crisis which followed it. Writing to his 
friend Dana in 1836, — he had already been seven 
years on the " Post," — he says : — 

" Plans for the future I have none at present, 
except to work hard as I am now obliged to do ; I 
hope, however, the day will come when I may re- 
tire without danger of starving, and give myself 
to occupations that I like better. But who is suf- 
fered to shape the course of his own life?" 

In July following, he writes to his wife : — 

" ' The Evening Post ' was a sad, dull thing dur- 
ing the winter after Sedgwick 1 left it, and people 

1 During Mr. Bryant's absence the previous year in Europe, 
his partner, Mr. Leggett, had been taken ill, and the columns of 
the Evening Post were temporarily confided to Theodore Sedg- 



86 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

were getting tired of it. I have raised it a good 
deal, so that it begins to be talked about and 
quoted. I must now apply myself to bringing it 
up to its old standard, after which I shall look for 
a purchaser. Dr. Anderson says he will find me 
one. I think from the attention he pays to poli- 
tics, writing frequently, talking much, and coming 
to the office to read the papers we receive in ex- 
change, that he may possibly become a purchaser 
himself." 

How modest were his views of a retiring fortune 
in those days appears in a letter written to his 
brother John in September of the same year : — 

" I think of making some disposition of my in- 
terest in the 4 Evening Post,' and coming out to 
the Western country with a few thousand dollars to 
try my fortune. What do you think of such a 
plan ? What could I do next summer or fall with 
a little capital of from three to five thousand dol- 
lars ? Will you write me at large your views of 
the probability of my success, and of the particular 
modes of investment which would yield the larg- 
est profit ? I am inclined to think that I might 
make money as fast as I can do it here, and with 
much less wear and tear of brains. Write me 
fully, but do not go too much into conjecture ; 
speak only of what you know, or of what has ac- 
tually happened. I have not been much pleased, 

wick, Jr., a member of the New York bar and a nepbew of Miss 
Sedgwick, the authoress. His discussion of public questions 
under the signature of " Veto'' enjoyed quite a reputation in 
their day. 



THE JOURNALIST. 87 

since my return, with New York. The entire 
thoughts of the inhabitants seem to be given to 
the acquisition of wealth ; nothing else is talked 
of. The city is dirtier and noisier, and more un- 
comfortable, and dearer to live in than it ever was 
before. I have had my fill of a town life, and be- 
gin to wish to pass a little time in the country. I 
have been employed long enough with the manage- 
ment of a daily newspaper, and desire leisure for 
literary occupations that I love better. It was not 
my intention when I went to Europe to return to 
the business of conducting a newspaper. If I were 
to come out to Illinois next spring with the design 
of passing the year there, what arrangements could 
be made for my family ? What sort of habitation 
could I have, and what would it cost ? I hardly 
think I shall come to Illinois to live, but I can tell 
better after I have tried it. You are so distant 
from all the large towns, and the means of educa- 
tion are so difficult to come at, and there is so little 
literary society, that I am afraid I might wish to 
get back to the Atlantic coast. I should like, how- 
ever, to try the experiment of a year at the West." 
Again, in February of 1837, he reveals to his 
friend Dana his yearnings for more leisure and less 
care. " The gains you talk of I wish I could see. 
The expenses of printing and conducting a daily 
paper have vastly increased lately, and there is no 
increase in the rate of advertisements, etc., to make 
it up. 1 should be very glad of an opportunity to 
attempt something in the way I like best, and am, 



88 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

perhaps, fittest for ; but here I am a draught-horse, 
harnessed to a daily drag. I have so much to do 
with my legs and hoofs, struggling and pulling 
and kicking, that, if there is anything of the Peg- 
asus in me, I am too much exhausted to use my 
wings. I would withdraw from the occupation if 
I could do so and be certain of a moderate subsist- 
ence, for, with my habits and tastes, a very little 
would suffice. I am growing, I fear, more discon- 
tented and impatient than I ought to be at the lot 
which has fallen to me." 

In the following year, 1837, he found himself 
obliged to give up any idea of selling or fleeing, 
for reasons assigned in the following letter to his 
brother John : — 

"New York, October 25th. 

" I am very much obliged to you for your kind 
offer, and if I were at liberty I should like noth- 
ing better than to pass a year in Illinois. But I 
am fastened here for the present. The ' Evening 
Post ' cannot be disposed of in these times, and, 
on account of the difficulty of making collections, 
its income does not present an appearance which 
would enable me to sell it for its real value, even 
if I could find a purchaser. I am chained to the 
oar for another year, at least. The prospects of 
the journal are, however, improving, though I am 
personally no better for it at present. I am very 
much perplexed by the state of my pecuniary af- 
fairs. I have taken a house in town at as moderate 
a rent as I could find, and expect my family from 



THE JOURNALIST. 89 

the country in a very few days. I am obliged to 
practice the strictest frugality, but that I do not 
regard as an evil. The great difficulty lies in 
meeting the debts in which the purchase of the 
paper has involved me. When I went to Europe, 
the ' Evening Post ' was producing a liberal in- 
come ; Mr. Leggett, who conducted it, espoused 
very zealously the cause of the Abolitionists, and 
then was taken ill. The business of the establish- 
ment fell into the hands of a drunken and saucy 
clerk to manage, and the hard times came on. All 
these things had a bad effect on the profits of the 
paper, and when I returned they were reduced to 
little or nothing. In the mean time Mr. Leggett 
and myself had contracted a large debt for the 
purchase of the ; Evening Post.' He retired, and 
the whole was left on my shoulders. I have been 
laboring very diligently to restore the paper to a 
prosperous state, and begin to have hopes that I 
shall retrieve what was lost during my absence in 
Europe by careful attention to the business of 
the paper, properly so called. I cannot leave the 
establishment till I have put it in good order. No- 
body will buy it of me. With so much to pay, 
and with a paper so little productive, I have been 
several times on the point of giving it up, and 
going out into the world worse than penniless. 
Nothing but a disposition to look at the hopeful 
side of things prevented me, and I now see reason 
to be glad that I persevered. 

" I have no leisure for poetry. The labors in 



90 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

which I am engaged would not, perhaps, be great 
to many people, but they are as great as I can 
endure with a proper regard to my health. I can- 
not pursue intellectual labor so long as many of 
a more robust or less nervous temperament. My 
constitution requires intervals of mental repose. 
To keep myself in health I take long walks in the 
country, for half a day, a day, or two days. I can- 
not well leave my business for a longer period, and 
I accustom myself to the greatest simplicity of 
diet, renouncing tea, coffee, animal food, etc. By 
this means I enjoy a health scarcely ever inter- 
rupted, but when I am fagged I hearken to nature 
and allow her to recruit. I find by experience 
that this must be if I would not kill myself. What 
you say of living happily on small means I agree 
to with all my heart. My ideas of competence 
have not enlarged a single dollar. Indeed, they 
have rather been moderated and reduced by recent 
events, and I would be willing to compound for 
a less amount than I would have done three or 
four years since. If I had the means of retir- 
ing, I would go into the country, where 1 could 
adopt a simpler mode of living, and follow the 
bent of my inclination in certain literary pursuits, 
but I have a duty to perform to my creditors." 

Among the unanswerable problems of history 
which have exercised the ingenuity of speculative 
minds, there are few, perhaps, of more interest to 
Americans than those which would have been pre- 
sented if some of the things that might have hap- 



THE JOURNALIST. 91 

pened, and seemed likely to happen, had happened ; 
if, for example, Columbus and his party had been 
lost on the voyage which resulted in the discovery 
of America, and if Milton, Cromwell, and the first 
Napoleon had executed, the purpose, which each 
of them at one time seriously entertained, of seek- 
ing a refuge and a home on this side of the Atlan- 
tic. Of scarcely less interest would it be to his 
countrymen to be able to divine the consequences 
had Bryant's wish at this time to sell his paper 
and emigrate to the West been granted. 

Bryant managed in a few years to retrieve the 
ground his journal had lost during his absence 
from the country, and from that time his paper, 
though once or twice threatened with disaster, al- 
ways yielded him enough to give him peace of 
mind. Its revenues varied considerably at differ- 
ent periods, as its doctrines happened to be more or 
less in accord with those of the party upon which 
it was largely dependent, but it always proved a 
sure reliance for his needs, and occasionally for 
something more, though it never promised him afflu- 
ence until he had reached a pretty advanced period 
of life. The average net earnings of his paper 
prior to 1849 was about $10,000 a year, of which 
his share was four tenths. Its net earnings for the 
year 1850 were a little less than $16,000 ; for the 
year 1860 it was over 170,000. From this time 
forth, I think it may be stated with confidence that 
Mr. Bryant experienced no privation which money 
could relieve. He not only was able to provide for 



92 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

all the personal needs of himself and family, but 
he had the chief if not the only privilege which 
makes wealth desirable, of ministering to the wants 
of others, and of extending substantial encourage- 
ment to those institutions of public beneficence 
which specially commended themselves to his taste 
and judgment. 

We are all of us disposed at some stage, if not 
at every stage, of our lives to complain of the 
burdens we are required to carry, and of the diffi- 
culties with which we have to struggle like Milton's 
lion, " to get free our hinder parts." Few, how- 
ever, are grateful, or at least as grateful as they 
should be, for the discipline and the training which 
they owe to these trials, and through which they 
acquire most of whatever capacities for usefulness 
and happiness they possess. Longfellow, during 
his professional life at Cambridge, was constantly 
groaning over the drudgery it imposed, and fancying 
that if he had nothing to do, he would do a great 
deal more. " Pardon me, oh ye souls," he wrote 
to one of his correspondents, " who, seeing edu- 
cation only from afar, speak of it in such glowing 
words. You see only the great pictures hanging in 
the light ; not the grinding of the paint and the 
oil, nor the pulling of hair from the camel's back 
for the brushes." 

Yet both of these gifted bards probably lived to 
realize that neither would have attained the rank 
they took, even as poets, not to say men, had their 
lives lacked their background of drudgery. A life 



THE JOURNALIST. 93 

of pleasure, " stretched upon the rack of a too easy 
chair," is of all lives the most miserable. There 
is no recreation where there is no work. The 
grinding of the paints may seem very hateful to the 
enthusiastic artist, who naturally fancies himself 
born for better things. But Longfellow, in this 
allusion to a sister art, seems to have overlooked 
the fact that the most renowned painters of the 
world not only ground their own paints, but pre- 
pared their own canvases, and even the walls which 
they decorated with their immortal frescoes. 

Happily, Bryant was saved from the devices of 
his own heart and the vita umbratilis for which 
in his short-sightedness he yearned, and he lived 
to realize the wisdom so quaintly phrased by 
Quarles : — 

" Mechanic soul, thou must not only do 
With Martha, but with Mary ponder too, 
Happy the house where these two sisters vary, 
But most, when Martha 's reconciled to Mary. ' ' 

Among the rarest things to find in all literary 
history are men who have succeeded as well as Bry- 
ant in maintaining a conversancy with men and 
affairs without entirely losing their hold of the con- 
templative life. 

Partly from sanitary considerations, but more to 
satisfy his craving for opportunities of indulging 
his love of nature, which amounted more nearly 
than anything else to a passion with him, he took 
advantage of the first surge of financial prosperity 
that overtook him to secure a country home. In 



94 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

1843, he found on Long Island a place entirely to 
his taste. " It was near a little village afterward 
called Koslyn, overlooking an estuary of the Sound, 
— such a nook as a poet might well choose, both 
for its shady seclusion and its beautiful prospects ; 
embowered in woods that covered a row of gentle 
hills, and catching glimpses of a vast expanse of 
water, enlivened in the distance by the sails of a 
metropolitan commerce. The estate was at first 
confined to a few acres only, on which he proposed 
erecting a house according to his taste, but he was 
soon enamored of a house already erected on it, 
and the next year made it his own. It was an old- 
fashioned mansion, built by a plain Quaker in 1787, 
containing many spacious rooms, surrounded by 
shrubberies and grand trees, and communicating 
by a shelving lawn with one of the prettiest of 
small fresh-water lakes." 1 

With this acquisition life bloomed with new 
charms for Bryant, and the toils of his profession 
were at last "sweetened to his taste." Nothing 
more was heard of selling the " Evening Post," 
nor of a new home in the wilderness. For the re- 
mainder of his life, from early spring until winter 
drove him to his city residence, he rarely spent less 
than two or three days of every week at his Eos- 
lyn home. Leaving his cares behind him in town, 
here he gave himself up a to keeping his friend- 
ships in repair," to nursing and developing all the 
vital energies and graces of his garden and farm ; 
1 Godwin's Life, i. 408. 



THE JOURNALIST. 95 

to cultivating a most intimate acquaintance with 
every tree and flower and fruit that they could be 
encouraged to produce, and in teaching them to 
become to his neighbors and friends the prolific 
instruments of a judicious and seasonable benefi- 
cence. Here it was his delight to receive his old 
friends, and to extend an unostentatious but wel- 
come hospitality to distinguished strangers who 
were apt to think that " seeing the States " neces- 
sarily included a visit to Roslyn. 

Partly to gratify a sentiment, but more in the 
hope of benefiting Mrs. Bryant's health, which 
already had become the subject of some solicitude, 
in 1865 Bryant became the proprietor of another 
country seat. Writing to an English correspond- 
ent, he says : " I have been passing a few weeks 
at a place to which I shall return in a day or two. 
I mean Cummington, my birthplace. Here I have 
repossessed myself of the old homestead and farm 
where my father and maternal grandfather lived, 
and have fitted it up and planted a screen of ever- 
greens, from ten to twenty feet in height, back of 
it to protect it from the northwest winds, — though 
that is of little consequence in summer, — and here 
I pass several weeks in the warm season. The 
region is high, — nineteen hundred feet above the 
level of the sea ; the summers are cool, the air Swiss- 
like, and the healthiness of the country remarka- 
ble." . . . 

His private letters from his country homes all 
breathe of the regenerating atmosphere in which 



96 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

they were penned. Those who only knew Bryant 
through the columns of his journal would hardly 
recognize his pen in the following letter to his ven- 
erable friend, and for some time pastor, the Eev. 
Dr. Dewey. 

"New York, April 30, 1860. 
" 6 If we will have you, doctor? what words 
have passed thy lips unweighed ? ' If the earth 
will have the spring, — if the sunflower will have 
sunshine, — if the flock will have grass. You 
might as well put an 'if between a hungry man 
and his dinner. You shall come to Roslyn, you 
and your Sultana, and shall be welcome, and 
treated en rois. If I were writing for the press 
I should not say ' en rois,' for in public I hold it 
my duty to maintain on all occasions the suprem- 
acy and sufficiency of the English language ; but 
I have said en rois because it came into my head. 
Come on and we will make the most of you 
both, and anybody else you choose to bring with 
you, — that our poor means allow. You shall 
not be walked out more than you absolutely 
choose, nor asked to look at anything. You shall 
have full leave to bury yourself in books, or write, 
or think, or smoke away your time, and I will make 
a provision of cigars for your idle hours, with the 
prudent toleration which the innocent have for the 
necessary vices of others. I have a coachman, and 
he shall take you about the country whenever you 
and Mrs. Dewey take a fancy for a ride. And 
having done this, I will neglect you, for I am afraid 



THE JOURNALIST. 97 

that is what you like, to your heart's content. And 
then if, — for I, too, must have my if, — if you 
will only stay over Sunday, you shall be asked to 
preach by our orthodox Presbyterian minister, who 
inquires when Dr. Dewey is expected, for he wants 
to ask him to preach. Come, then, prepared for a 
ten days' sojourn, with a stock of patience in your 
heart, and a sermon or two in your pocket, of your 
second or third quality, for we are quite plain peo- 
ple here, and anything very fine is wasted upon us. 
" For any imperfections in my eulogy on Irving 
I beg you to consider the Historical Society as 
responsible ; they put it upon me without consulting 
me ; and at first I flatly refused, but I was after- 
ward talked into consent. Besides the excuses of 
incapacity, unworthiness, and all that, I did not 
want the labor of writing the discourse. There has 
been no end of work with me the past winter. . . . 
Among other symptoms of age, I find a disposition 
growing up within me to regard the world as be- 
longing to a new race of men, who have somehow 
or other got into it, and taken possession of it, and 
among whom lam a superfluity. What have I to 
do with their quarrels and controversies ? I, who 
am already proposed as a member of the same club 
with Daniel Defoe and Sir Roger L'Estrange. Is 
it fitting that, just as I have taken my hat to go out 
and join the Ptolemies, I should be plucked by the 
elbow and asked to read a copy of silly verses, and 
say whether they are fit to be printed ? Besides, it 
seems to be agreed by everybody who is about my 



98 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

own age, or older, that the world is nowadays much 
wickeder than when they were young; and it is 
no more than it deserves to leave it to take care 
of itself as it can. But we will talk over these 
things when you come." 

Again, three years later, he pleads for another 
visit from his reverend friend, written in a yet 
more frolicsome not to say rollicksome mood : — 

" Eoslyn, October 5, 1863. 
" Looking at your last a second time, it strikes 
me that you might, perhaps, expect that I should 
answer some part of it. Let me say, then, that 
we will give you a reasonable time to consider the 
question of coming to Roslyn, you and Mrs. Dewey, 
if you will only come at last, and before the days 
arrive described in the verses which you will find 
on the other leaf of this sheet. Mrs. Kirkland 
says she will come when you do. 

" The season wears an aspect glum and glummer, 
The icy north wind, an unwelcome comer, 
Frighting from garden-walks each pretty hummer, 
Whose murmuring music lulled the noons of summer, 
Roars in the woods, with grummer voice and grummer, 
And thunders in the forest like a drummer. 
Dumb are the birds, — they could not well be dumber ; 
The winter-cold, life's pitiless benumber, 
Bursts water-pipes, and makes us call the plumber. 
Now, by the fireside, toils the patient thumber 
Of ancient books, and no less patient summer 
Of long accounts, while topers fill the rummer, 
The maiden thinks what furs will best become her, 
And on the stage-boards shouts the gibing mummer. 
Shut in by storms, the dull piano-strummer 
Murders old tunes. There 's nothing wearisomer! " 



THE JOURNALIST. 99 

It is true that for the first twenty years of his 
editorial career Bryant led a very laborious life, 
but it was not merely love of the quiet and leisure 
of an independent planter, nor aversion to the din 
and distraction of the city, that caused him to 
dream of exchanging his newspaper for a farm on 
the prairies. Hard work did not worry him ; on 
the contrary, during all this period his health 
seemed constantly to improve, and the care which 
he took of it was so judicious that he was always 
in condition for literary work of any kind. He 
seemed to have no moods nor seasons when literary 
labor was to him more or less irksome than at 
other. His discontent with his position has been 
and will always be the common exjjerience of all 
who attempt to impose upon their neighbors higher 
standards of duty than their neighbors are pre- 
pared to accept. Those paths always lead to Cal- 
vary and the Cross. Bryant's standards were very 
high. His editorial work was chiefly critical. To 
find fault with the conduct of large parties and of 
communities is never a gracious task, and is the less 
gracious the more it is deserved. Bryant was so 
constituted moralty, that when he saw public 
abuses, especially in high places, he could not hold 
his peace. He felt like St. Paul that, did he keep 
silence, the very stones would cry out. He was 
not prone to calculate the consequences of publicly 
judging the rest of mankind by his own standards. 
He was once heard to quote in extenuation of his 
course the following majestic passage of Milton : — 



100 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

" It is manifest with what small willingness I 
endure, to leave calm and pleasing solitariness, to 
embark upon a troublous sea of noises and harsh 
disputes : put from beholding the bright counte- 
nance of Truth in the quiet of delightful studies ; 
but one of the meanest under service, if God by 
his secretary, conscience, enjoined it, it were sad 
for me if I should draw back." 

The duty of the journalist to comment some- 
times with severity upon the conduct of public men, 
and of men with whom he entertains or has enter- 
tained social relations, is one of the most unpleas- 
ant that his profession devolves upon him. It 
tends to drive him from public resorts and make 
him appear unsocial. It had these effects upon 
Bryant during the most active portion of his life 
as a journalist. He studied to so manage his crit- 
ical function as to create the least possible friction, 
and was wont to cite to his editorial associates the 
example of Dr. Bartlett, the editor of a weekly 
paper in New York, especially addressed to Eng- 
lish people, called " The Albion," who made it a 
rule " never to write anything of any one which 
would make it unpleasant to meet him the follow- 
ing day at dinner." Though Bryant thought well 
of this standard, it must be conceded that in the 
discharge of what he esteemed his duty as a jour- 
nalist, he had somewhat reduced the number of 
people whom it would have been pleasant for him 
or them to meet at the same festive board. Chacun 
a les defauts de ses vertus^ and Mr. Bryant was 



THE JOURNALIST. 101 

so constituted that no relations, social, political, or 
literary, could induce hira to forget that in his edi- 
torial chair he was the trustee of the public, the 
sentinel of a sleeping army. As such he sometimes 
incurred the reproach of intolerance and unchari- 
tableness, not from being too severe in his condem- 
nation of wrong, but in his judgments of those to 
whom such wrongs were imputed, no one but the 
Master knowing the extenuating circumstances of 
every man's misconduct. 

This loyalty to his profession disinclined him to 
partake of the hospitalities of those whose posi- 
tions before the public were liable to bring them 
under his editorial guns. Hence his social rela- 
tions through life were mostly with those who were 
contented with the honors and dignities which 
could be acquired and enjoyed in private stations. 

Outside of the comparatively restricted number 
to whom his standards did not seem chimerical, he 
was by some regarded as a scold, by more as an 
impracticable guide. The editor of the " Herald " 
was in the habit of referring to him and his asso- 
ciates as " The Poets of the Post." Of course, 
by those who happened to be directly under the 
shadow of his frown, he was regarded as an enemy. 
He heard little from those who approved of and 
admired his work, while he was deafened with the 
clamor of those whose consciences were pricked, 
whose vanity was wounded, or whose schemes were 
thwarted by his denunciations. It seemed to him 
in those earlier stages of his journalistic experience 



102 WILLIAM CUILEN BRYANT. 

that he was rowing against a strong current, with- 
out the hope of any assistance of wind or tide. 
Had he been willing simply to reflect the fads and 
fancies of the day, had he been able to permit his 
paper to drift with the tide, he might probably 
have found his employment lucrative, and himself 
a popular favorite. 

Bryant's friend Dana had little faith in the 
efficacy of his methods of reforming and perfect- 
ing society, and was constantly urging him to 
stick to his poetry. He said to him, " Keep 
eye and heart upon poetry all that you can, amid 
bustle and anxiety. As to reforming the world, 
give all that up. It is not to be done in a day, 
nor, on your plan, through all time. Human na- 
ture is not fitted for such a social condition as 
your fancy is pleased with." 

Dana was more nearly right than Bryant then 
supposed him to be, but far less nearly right than 
he supposed himself to be. Bryant, perhaps, ex- 
aggerated the importance of political organizations, 
criticism, and debate under republican institutions, 
overlooking the great and controlling fact that in 
a popular government the laws and their admin- 
istration will always fairly express the average 
morality and intelligence of the community that 
makes them, and that the only way to secure higher 
standards of legislation and administration is to 
elevate the average of the morality and intelli- 
gence of the constituency. In saying, therefore, 
that the world was not to be reformed on Bryant's 



THE JOURNALIST. 103 

plan, Dana was perhaps the nearer right of the 
two ; but the intimation of Dana that human nature 
is so constituted that the people are incapable of 
improving their government, and that they should 
be ruled by a hereditary or dynastic class, like 
convicts in a prison or a chain-gang, which was 
practically his view, was yet farther from the truth, 
as we think history is demonstrating. Paul fight- 
ing with the beasts at Ephesus, Dana must have 
deemed a mistake, a waste of energy, resurrection 
or no resurrection. 

There is no doubt that in republics the govern- 
ment can only be improved substantially by rais- 
ing the moral standard of the people. While not 
undervaluing nor neglecting ethical teaching, Mr. 
Bryant, in common with most men having to deal 
with public questions, expected more from political 
organizations and combinations than was to be 
realized from them, while later in life he became 
aware that governments like clocks would run 
down as they were wound up ; that they are re- 
sultant forces, the directions of which are more or 
less affected by each individual member of the so- 
ciety for which it is constituted, and that the gov- 
ernment which remains after we have done what 
we think best in our respective spheres is, on the 
whole, the government best suited for its constit- 
uency. 

Though Bryant never consciously gave up to 
party what was meant for mankind, he was, never- 
theless, in every proper sense of the word, a party 



104 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

man. While recognizing every man's primary 
responsibility to his own conscience, he did not 
pretend to think anybody wiser than everybody. 
In dealing, therefore, with all public questions he 
recognized fully the importance of combination. 
He as freely criticised the conduct of his own 
party as of any other, but he never broke with it 
unless and until it was convicted of subordinating 
the greater to the lesser interests of society. While 
its main tendencies were right, he submitted to its 
errors of detail. He broke with the Democratic 
party in 1848, refusing to support the candidature 
of General Cass for President ; but not because 
of anything in the public life of General Cass 
which he did not admire, nor of much in the res- 
olutions of the Convention which nominated him, 
which he frankly denounced, but because the Dem- 
ocratic party of the State in which he resided was 
not represented in the Convention by which Cass 
had been nominated. He insisted that the State 
of New York was entitled to a voice in the selec- 
tion of a candidate for its support, and he was the 
less disposed to put up with her practical exclusion 
from the Convention because it was effected in the 
interests and at the behests of the partisans of 
slavery. With Cass's defeat he resumed his rela- 
tions with his party, supporting all succeeding 
Democratic candidates until the nomination of 
Abraham Lincoln in I860. 1 

1 Writing to one of his brothers shortly after the nomination of 
Franklin Pierce to the Presidency by the Democratic party, and 



THE JOURNALIST. 105 

The Democratic party at this election was di- 
vided by the slavery question, and presented two 

John P. Hale by the Abolitionists, he vindicated his support of 
the former in the following- terms : — 

" The Free-Soil Party is now doing" nothing. Its representa- 
tives in Congress have wasted their time till all chance of repeal- 
ing or modifying the fugitive slave law is gone by, if there ever 
was any. They have left everything to be done by the journals. 
Now, at the end of the session, when it is too late for serious de- 
bate, Sumner gets up and wants to make a speech. They refuse 
to consider his resolution, as might have been expected. He 
might have stated the subject a score of times in the early part 
of the session. The whole conduct of the public men of the 
party has been much of a piece with this. What is the use of 
preserving a separate organization if such be its fruits ? But, as 
I intimated, I see not the least chance of a repeal or change of 
the fugitive slave law. Its fate is to fall into disuse. All politi- 
cal organizations to procure its repeal are attempts at an im- 
practicability. We must make it odious, and prevent it from 
being" enforced. That the Evening Post can do, in a certain 
measure, just as effectively by supporting" Pierce as Hale. Nay, 
it can do it far more effectually. A journal belonging to a large 
party has infinitely more influence than when it is the org"an of a 
small conclave. In speaking" ag'ainst slavery, the Evening Post 
expresses the opinions of a large number of people ; in exhort- 
ing them to vote for Mr. Hale it expresses the opinions of few. 
The Free-Soil members of Congress — Hale and Sumner, and 
many others — are not more than half right on various important 
questions. Freedom of trade is not by any means a firmly estab- 
lished policy in this country. I do not know where these men 
are on that question. They vote away the public money into the 
pockets of the Hunkers, — Collins, for example. The only cer- 
tainty we have of safety in regard to these matters is in a Demo- 
cratic administration. 

'' These are some of my reasons for supporting Pierce. I think 
the slavery question an important one, but I do not see what is to 
be done for the cause of freedom by declining to vote for the 
Democratic candidate. 

"We of New York — the Democrats of the State, I mean — 



106 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

candidates ; neither, however, opposed to the exten- 
sion of slavery into the free Territories, upon which 
point he was inexorable. The Republican party, 
which had been organized during the interval 
from the anti-slavery elements of both the old par- 
ties for the purpose mainly of resisting such ex- 
tension, presented Abraham Lincoln as its candi- 
date. As the triumph of either of the Democratic 
candidates would have practically resulted in dis- 
puting the right of the majority to rule, and in 
the subversion of the principles upon which our 
government was founded and upon which only it 
could hope to subsist, Mr. Bryant supported the 
Republican candidate. 

These are, I believe, the only instances in his 
long career as a journalist in which he did not find 
it wise and expedient to put up with the evils of 

will contend for the measures and principles we think right, let 
what will come of it. No man pledged against the prohibition 
of slavery in the Territories, or supposed to be hostile to it, will 
be able to get the vote of the State of New York. An) 7 separate 
organization, however, would come to nothing. All parties 
formed for a single measure are necessarily short-lived, and are 
as much subject to the abuses and vices of party as any other — I 
have sometimes thought more so. I never mean to belong to any 
of them unless I see some very strong and compelling reason for 
it. The journalist who goes into one of these narrow associations 
gains by it no increase of independence in discussion, while he 
parts with the greater part of his influence. As to the influence 
of the administration, it is at this moment very insignificant in 
New York. It is strongest in the city, where the government 
patronage is greatest ; but even here it is extremely feeble, and 
in the country it hardly exists. We are awaiting, as you see, what 
will grow out of the present state of things with no very san- 
guine hopes, and very indefinite notions of what the event will be." 



TEE JOURNALIST. 107 

the party in which he had enrolled himself, rather 
than fly to evils he knew not of in other organiza- 
tions. Had he not ceased to take much interest in 
public affairs, and to participate in the active 
management of his paper, it is not unlikely that 
he would have broken with the Republican party 
during the later years of President Grant's admin- 
istration, with which he was extremely dissatisfied. 
Though his paper rendered a perfunctory sup- 
port to the Republican candidate of 1876, we feel 
authorized to affirm that he did not vote for him. 

In dealing with facts, Mr. Bryant was not only 
conscientious, but cautious. In the whole of his 
long career he was rarely called upon to defend 
any statement of fact, or to qualify it. Though 
endowed by nature with a violent temper, he was 
singularly temperate in debate. He had a refined 
humor, and, when occasion required, was master of 
a scathing satire, but he was never tempted to in- 
dulge ift either at the expense of his own dignity 
or that of the subject he might be treating. From 
his editorials it would not be difficult to extract 
some of the finest specimens of prose in our lan- 
guage, but unhappily they are so woven into the 
texture of events of transitory importance, and for 
the most part long since forgotten, that their fame, 
which in their day was not limited by the bounds 
of the country to which they were addressed, can 
hardly be expected to survive another generation. 

The degree and kind of influence exerted by 
Mr. Bryant, or, indeed, by any other journalist 



108 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

upon human society, can only be properly appre- 
ciated by contemporary readers, for the reason 
that the work of the journalist never culminates 
in results which are traceable to their proper 
parentage. The soldier wins a battle, the lawyer 
wins his case, the statesman by his wisdom or his 
eloquence brings a nation to his feet, the philan- 
thropist founds a durable public charity, the artist 
produces a masterpiece. In these results the toil 
and study of years are made intelligible and im- 
pressive. They not only address the imagination, 
but from what we see we are enabled to form a 
tolerably definite idea of the power required to 
achieve them. The work of a journalist offers no 
such appeal to the imagination. Like the sun 
upon the vegetation of our planet, the journalist 
leaves an impression upon the minds of many 
thousands every day, but, unlike the sun, these 
successive daily impressions do not culminate in a 
harvest. The world little recks their influence, 
dispensed like the familiar and unnoticed alterna- 
tions of day and night, in shaping the thought and 
in building up the dignity, power, and resources of 
the nation. 

Though, as has been already remarked, Bryant 
was not a man of moods and tenses, but owing to 
the regularity and simplicity of his life and his 
wise control of all his appetites was always in con- 
dition for any kind of intellectual exertion, he was 
not without some of the eccentricities of genius. 
He never liked to write for his journal except at 



THE JOURNALIST. 109 

his desk in his office. It cost him a special effort 
to do any work for the paper elsewhere, and it is 
hardly an exaggeration to say that he never wrote 
for the paper at his home. When the semi-cen- 
tennial anniversary of the " Evening Post " was 
approaching, it was proposed to him to prepare for 
its columns a sketch of its career. He cheerfully 
accepted the task, and in order that he might be 
free from interruption he was advised to go down 
to his country-home at Eoslyn and remain there 
until it was finished, and have such of the files of 
the paper as he might have occasion to consult 
sent to him there. He rejected the proposal as 
abruptly as if he had been asked to offer sacrifices 
to Apollo. He would allow no such work to follow 
him there. Not even the shadow of his business 
must fall upon the consecrated haunts of his muse. 
He rarely brought or sent anything from the coun- 
try for the " Evening Post ; " but if he did, it was 
easy to detect in the character of the fish that they 
had been caught in strange waters. This separa- 
tion of his professional from his poetical life must 
be taken into account in any effort to explain the 
uniform esteem in which he was always held as a 
poet by his country people, while occasionally one 
of the least popular of journalists. 1 Bryant's office 
desk was his newspaper Egeria. It was also a curi- 
osity. Except for a space immediately in front of 

1 For a copy of this paper, which abounds in interesting- me- 
morials of one of the oldest journals in the country, see Appen- 
dix A. 



110 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

him about two feet long and eighteen inches deep, 
his desk was usually covered to the depth of from 
twelve to twenty inches with opened letters, manu- 
script, pamphlets, and books, the accumulation of 
years. During his absence in Europe in 1859-60, 
his associate thought to do Bryant a good turn by 
getting rid of this rubbish and clearing his table 
so that he should have room for at least one of his 
elbows on the table. When he returned and saw 
what had been done, it was manifest from his ex- 
pression — he said nothing — that what had been 
so kindly intended was regarded as anything but 
a kindness. He had also one habit in common 
with Pope, 1 of always writing his " copy " for the 
paper oh the backs of these old letters and re- 
jected MSS. One who was associated with him for 
many years in the management of the " Evening 
Post " affirms that he never knew Bryant to write 
an article for its columns on a fresh sheet of paper. 
He also used a quill pen, which he was in the habit 
of mending with a knife nearly as old as himself, 
and which might originally have cost him fifty 
cents. He has been heard to speak of this knife 
with affection, and to resent the suggestion that he 
should replace it with a better one. Every year 
had added a value to it which no new knife could 
possibly have in his eyes. The same attachment 
to old servants made him hold on to a blue cotton 

1 ' ' Paper-sparing" Pope ' ' was an epithet bestowed by Swift 
upon the poet. A great part of his version of the Iliad was writ- 
ten upon the backs of letters. 



THE JOURNALIST. Ill 

umbrella which had very little to commend it 
either in fair weather or foul but its age. The 
ladies of his household at last, and when he was 
about setting out for Mexico, conspired against 
the umbrella, hid it away, and in its place packed 
a nice new silk one. He discovered the fraud that 
had been practiced upon him, turned his back 
upon the parvenu, and insisted upon the restora- 
tion of his old and injured friend to its accustomed 
post of honor by his side. To him age made 
everything sacred but abuses. He petted the old 
brutes of his barnyard and stables, and held to 
his old friends with hooks of steel, closing his eyes 
resolutely to everything about thern which he could 
not admire. When his friends Verplanck and Til- 
den deprecated the nomination of Lincoln to the 
Presidency and opposed his election, preferring to 
leave the slavery problem to the sagacious minis- 
trations of time, much as he regretted their course, 
and frankly as he denounced it, he never permitted 
it for one moment to disturb their friendly rela- 
tions, or to interrupt their mutual confidences. He 
knew — no one better — that our affections are 
the growth of w T hat in us is permanent, our opin- 
ions, of what is more or less changeable and tran- 
sient. 

History teaches nothing more persistently than 
the demoralizing influences which beset the possess- 
ors of extraordinary power, and she has preserved 
to us the names of very few who have been able to 
resist them. The enormous power wielded by the 



112 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

director of a free press who is in a position daily 
to address thousands, and perhaps hundreds of 
thousands, most of whom are but imperfectly qual- 
ified to test the value of his opinions, is very in- 
toxicating. It is especially so to the junior mem- 
bers of the profession who have not previously 
been accustomed to any special deference for their 
utterances. The privilege of saying what one 
pleases, of whom one pleases, when and as often as 
one pleases ; to discipline a president or a cabinet 
minister as if he were a school-boy or a culprit ; to 
sneer at foreign sovereigns ; to make or mar the 
fortunes of a new book or play ; to " boom " or 
bankrupt a struggling corporation ; to trifle with 
the character of eminent citizens, or with the 
peace of a social or domestic circle, is one which 
few can possess without abusing, nor without grad- 
ually getting to underestimate the rights and 
judgments of others, and to overestimate their own. 
Arrogance, conceit, rashness, and self-sufficiency 
are the infirmities to which the profession of jour- 
nalism is most exposed, and which only the array 
of the higher qualities of human character can suc- 
cessfully resist. 

It is no mean evidence of the solid foundations 
upon which Bryant's moral character was erected 
that he never betrayed under any temptations or 
provocations the intoxicating influence of news- 
paper despotism. No one could ever detect a 
purely personal end to serve, a personal griev- 
ance to avenge, a personal ambition or vanity to be 



THE JOURNALIST. 113 

gratified, in any line that he ever wrote for his 
journal. 

If he had occasion to defend himself, his defense 
was sure to repose on public not on personal 
grounds. He regarded himself strictly as a trustee 
for the public, and bound to consecrate all the 
forces and influences of his paper to the public 
use. Hence, though an alert and aggressive com- 
batant, and by his literary and moral eminence 
sure to give more or less of dignity and conse- 
quence to any assailant, it was not possible to en- 
gage him in a personal controversy, unless public 
considerations were involved, and then they were 
always placed in the front of the battle. In this 
respect, also, he was in his day an exceptional as 
well as a model journalist. 

" In his intercourse with his colaborers and subordi- 
nates," wrote Mr. Godwin who was for many years his 
associate in the " Evening Post," " the impression pro- 
duced by Mr. Bryant, after a certain reticence, which 
diffused an atmosphere of coldness about him, was 
broken through, was that of his extreme simplicity and 
sincerity of character. He was as transparent as the 
day, as guileless as a child, and as clear in his integrity 
as the crystal that has no flaw nor crack. His love of 
truth was so instinctive and controlling that he seldom 
indulged in an indirection of speech except in the in- 
dulgence of his wit, which often flashed like summer 
lightning through the dark clouds of debate. He used 
no polite terms merely because they were polite, a plain, 
uncompromising adherence to the letter of his phrase 



114 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

seeming to him better than the most courtly affectation. 
As he tried to see all things as they were in their real 
relations to each other, so he tried to convey his percep- 
tion and feeling of them to others as they were. That 
exquisite fidelity to nature which forms one of the 
charms of his poetry pervaded his life and his utterances. 
No amount of adulation or flattery — and these were 
sometimes heaped upon him in unmeasured terms to- 
ward the latter part of his career — ever disturbed his 
modest estimate of himself, or misled him into vanity or 
presumption. To those who stood near him there was 
always something sublime in the severe yet single- 
hearted and unassuming simplicity of his bearing. 
Sensitive, as men of poetical temperament are apt to be, 
his command of his irritabilities and passions was so 
complete that he breathed an air perpetually serene and 
bright." 1 

It is possible that his power as a journalist 
might have been increased by a larger intercourse 
with the w T orld. During the most active stages 
of his professional career he saw comparatively 
few people, save those who sought him at his 
office, and these consisted largely, of course, of 
those who had personal ends to serve by the visit. 
This isolation made it so much easier for designing 
men to disguise the antipathies, prejudices, and 
selfishness which often prompted their suggestions. 
A larger commerce with the world would have rec- 
tified erroneous impressions sometimes left upon 

1 Letter addressed to the Evening Post from Carlsbad, Ger- 
many, June 15, 1878. 



THE JOURNALIST. 115 

his mind by this class of parasites, who usually 
approached him on the moral side of his nature, 
because it was the most impressionable. 

Though accustomed daily for more than half a 
century to discuss professionally the doings of our 
federal and state governments, he was never at 
Washington before the war, I believe, but once, 
except as a traveler passing through to some re- 
moter point. He was once urged to visit the fed- 
eral capital during an important crisis in our 
struggle for free labor and free speech. He de- 
clined, assigning as a reason that he had been 
there once, — I think it was during the adminis- 
tration of President Van Buren, — and found that 
he was more content with the judgment he formed 
in his office of the doings at the seat of govern- 
ment than with any he was able to form under 
the shadow of the Capitol. Once also during a 
critical period of the war he yielded reluctantly to 
the importunities of some friends, and went to 
Washington to urge a more vigorous prosecution 
of the war and the immediate emancipation of the 
slaves. He shrank too from the restraints which 
personal intercourse with the public servants im- 
posed upon the freedom of his pen. According to 
his view, a journalist did less than his duty who 
did not strive at least to leave the world better 
than he found it ; who did not wrestle with those 
social and political abuses which are amenable to 
public opinion. The reform of society, as he 
thought, like Mahomed's paradise, lies in the 



116 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

shadow of crossed swords. Controversy, therefore, 
always earnest and sometimes acrimonious with 
those whom he regarded as the Amorites, the 
Hivites, and the Perizzites of the land, was inev- 
itable. With them he made no terms. He had 
no personal antagonisms, but he could not compro- 
mise or transact with those whom he regarded as 
the enemies of society. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE POET. 

As a poet, Bryant is to be judged by the quality 
rather than the quantity of his work. The sum of 
all his verse that he thought worth preserving did 
not exceed thirteen thousand lines. Of these, 
about one third were written before 1829. The 
double task of mastering his new profession and 
that of discharging its duties pretty effectually 
absorbed his time and thoughts for several of the 
succeeding years. He wrote but thirty lines in 
1830, but sixty in 1831. In 1832, he wrote two 
hundred and twenty-two. It does not appear that 
he wrote any in 1833. In the ten years imme- 
diately succeeding 1829, he seems to have produced 
only eleven hundred and thirty-seven lines, or a 
trifle over one hundred lines a year. But though 
he produced comparatively little during this dec- 
ade, he did not suffer the waters of " livid ob- 
livion " to roll over him. 

In 1831, he published a volume containing about 
eighty of his poems, in addition to those which had 
appeared in the pamphlet collection in 1821. He 
was induced to try the fortunes of this little vol- 
ume by more impartial and less indulgent tests 



118 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

than those to which his verse had hitherto been 
subjected. 

A friend had shown him a letter written by 
"Washington Irving, from Madrid, in which oc- 
curred the following passage : — 

" I have been charmed with what I have seen of the 
writing of Bryant and Halleck. Are you acquainted 
with them ? I should like to know something about 
them personally ; their view of thinking is quite above 
that of ordinary men and ordinary poets, and they are 
masters of the magic of poetic language." 

Encouraged if not determined by these words of 
commendation from such a competent authority, 
Mr. Bryant sent a copy of his volume to Murray 
in London, and at the same time addressed the 
following note to Irving : — 

" Sir, — I have put to press in this city a duo- 
decimo volume of two hundred and forty pages, 
comprising all my poems which I thought worth 
printing, most of which have already appeared. 
Several of them I believe you have seen, and of 
some, if I am rightly informed, you have been 
pleased to express a favorable opinion. Before 
publishing the thing here, I have sent a copy of it 
to Murray, the London bookseller, by whom I am 
anxious that it should be published in England. 
I have taken the liberty, which I hope you will 
pardon a countryman of yours, who relies on the 
known kindness of your disposition to plead his 
excuse, of referring him to you. As it is not alto- 
gether impossible that the work might be repub- 



TEE POET. 119 

lished in England, if I did not offer it myself, I 
could wish that it might be published by a respect- 
able bookseller in a respectable manner. 

" I have written to Mr. Verplanck desiring him 
to give me a letter to you on the subject, but as the 
packet which takes out my book will sail before I 
can receive an answer I have presumed so far on 
your goodness as to make the application myself. 
May I ask of you the favor to write to Mr. Mur- 
ray on the subject as soon as you receive this ? In 
my letter to him I have said nothing of the terms, 
which, of course, will depend upon circumstances 
which I may not know or of which I cannot judge. 
I should be glad to receive something for the 
work, but if he does not think it worth while to 
give anything, I had rather he should take it for 
nothing than that it should not be published by a 
respectable publisher. 

" I must again beg you to excuse the freedom I 
have taken. I have no personal acquaintance in 
England whom I could ask to do what I have ven- 
tured to request of you ; and I know of no person 
to whom I could prefer the request with greater 
certainty that it will be kindiy entertained. 

" I am, sir, 

With sentiments of the highest respect, 
Your obedient and humble servant, 
William Cullen Bryant. 

" P. S. — I have taken the liberty to accompany 
this letter with a copy of the work." 

Bryant received the following reply from Mr. 



120 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Irving, dated at Byron's former home, Newstead 
Abbey, January 26, 1832 : — 

Dear Sir, — I feel very much obliged to you for 
the volume you have had the kindness to send me, and 
am delighted to have in my possession a collection of 
your poems, which, separately, I have so highly admired. 
It will give me the greatest pleasure to be instrumental 
in bringing before the British public a volume so honor- 
able to our national literature. When I return to Lon- 
don, whiph will be in the course of a few days, I will 
ascertain whether any arrangement can be effected by 
which some pecuniary advantage can be secured to you. 
On this head I am not very sanguine. The book trade 
is at present in a miserably depressed state in England, 
and the publishers have become shy and parsimonious. 
Besides, they will not be disposed to offer you anything 
for a work in print for which they cannot secure a copy- 
right. I am sorry you sent the work to Murray, who 
has disappointed me grievously in respect to other 
American works intrusted to him ; and who has acted 
so unjustly in recent transactions with myself as to im- 
pede my own literary arrangements, and oblige me to 
look around for some other publisher. I shall, however, 
write to him about your work, and if he does not imme- 
diately undertake it, will look elsewhere for a favorable 
channel of publication. 

Believe me, my dear sir, 

With the highest consideration, 
Very truly yours, 

Washington Irving. 

Within a week from the date of this letter Mr. 
Irving received the following note from Murray : — 



THE POET. 121 

My dear Sir, — I received Mr. Bryant's poems yes- 
terday, and I am very sorry to say it is quite out of 
Mr. Murray's power to do anything for him, or with 
them. I send the volume to you in compliance with 
your request. 

I am, dear sir, 

Yours very truly, 

J. Murray, Jr. 

It seems to us now as if this reply or retort, 
whichever it was, might have been more courteous. 
How far its tenor was influenced by the quality of 
the poetry, how far by a national prejudice at that 
time more or less prevalent against anything Amer- 
ican, and how far by the strained relations that 
chanced then to exist between the publisher and the 
sponsor of the poems, are questions which it is im- 
possible and now, happily, unimportant to deter- 
mine. As a publisher and man of business, Mr. 
Murray probably was not at fault in declining the 
poems. For a variety of reasons, none of which, 
I venture to think, go to their merits, Bryant's 
poetry has never touched a very sympathetic chord 
in England. 1 

Mr. Irving, however, was not discouraged by the 
repulse of Murray, and soon made arrangements 
with another house, and thus announced the suc- 
cess of his negotiations on the 6th of March : — 

1 A curious illustration of the lack of esteem for Bryant's 
poetry in England, and prevailing ignorance there of his life- 
work as a journalist, may be found in the recent edition of the 
Encyclopedia Britannica, which has found no place in its Wal- 
halla for the name of William Cullen Bryant. 



122, WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

My dear Sir, — I send you a copy of the second 
edition of your work, published this day. You will 
perceive that I have taken the liberty of putting my 
name as editor, and of dedicating the work to Mr. 
Rogers. Something was necessary to call attention at 
this moment of literary languor and political excitement 
to a volume of poetry by an author almost unknown to 
the British public. 

I have taken the further liberty of altering two or 
three words in the little poem of " Marion's Men," lest 
they might startle the pride of John Bull on your first 
introduction to him. 

Mr. Andrews, the bookseller, has promised to divide 
with you any profits that may arise on the publication, 
and I have the fullest reliance on his good faith. The 
present moment, however, is far from promising to liter- 
ary gains, and I should not be surprised if the returns 
were but trifling. 

Believe me, my dear Sir, 

Very respectfully and truly yours, 

Washington Irving. 

Wm. C. Bryant, Esqr. 

Dana, who took more than a paternal pride in 
Bryant's poetry, choked a little over the dedication 
to Rogers. " I learn by to-day's paper," he wrote, 
" that the English edition of your poems has made 
its appearance with a dedication to Rogers by 
Irving. Samuel Rogers ! never mind, dear sir, it 
will help to favor." 

Rogers was not a great poet, but he was by no 
means an inferior critic, nor was there any poet in 
England in his time who did not value and desire 



THE POET. 123 

his protection. He had the sagacity to discern, and 
the magnanimity to recognize everywhere and on 
all occasions, the merit of Bryant's poetry, and 
when Bryant called upon him later in London, he 
neglected no means of testifying his admiration and 
respect both for the poet and the man. It is inter- 
esting to those who knew Bryant's shyness and his 
undemonstrative ways with a new acquaintance to 
see how rapidly he entered into relations of affec- 
tionate intimacy with this venerable cynic, some 
evidences of which are disclosed in the following 
extract from an article which he allowed himself to 
write and print in the " Evening Post" on receiv- 
ing the news of Rogers's death. 

" The death of the poet Rogers," he said, " seems 
almost like the extinction of an institution. The 
world by his departure has one object the less of in- 
terest and reverence. The elegant hospitality which 
he dispensed for nearly three quarters of a century, 
and in which Americans had a large share, is 
brought to an end, and a vacuity is created which 
no Englishman can supply. Rogers loved to speak 
of his relations with Americans. ' Three American 
Presidents,' he used to say, ' have been entertained 
under my roof ; ' 1 and then he w T ould enumerate, in 
his succinct way, the illustrious men, founders of 
our republic, or eminent in its later history, who 
had been his guests. He claimed an hereditary 
interest in our country. On the news of the 
battle of Lexington, his father put on mourning. 

1 Probably John Quiney Adams, Fillmore, and Van Buren. 



124 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

4 Have you lost a friend ? ' somebody asked him 
who saw this indication of sorrow. ' I have lost 
a great many,' was the answer ; ' my friends in New 
England.' 

" Rogers's breakfasts were the pleasantest social 
meetings that can be conceived of. There you 
met persons of every variety of intellectual and 
social distinction, eminent men and attractive wo- 
men, wits, orators, dramatists, travelers, artists, 
persons remarkable for their powers of conversa- 
tion, all of whom found themselves on the easiest 
terms with their venerable host, whose noon of life 
was reached in the last century. Even bores, in 
his society, which discouraged all tediousness, and 
in the respect which his presence inspired, seemed 
to lose their usual character, and to fall involun- 
tarily into the lively and graceful flow of conversa- 
tion of which he gave the example. 

" The following little incident will show with how 
good a grace he could welcome a stranger to his 
hospitable dwelling. On one occasion he met an 
American for the first time 1 at a literary break- 
fast at the table of Mr. Everett, who, while abroad, 
was never wanting in obliging and friendly atten- 
tions to his countrymen. ' Where are you lodging ? ' 
he asked of the American. ' In St. James's Place,' 
was the answer. fc Come with me,' said Mr. Rogers, 
4 and I will show you the nearest way to St. James's 
Place.' He took his new acquaintance into that 
part of London which is sometimes called Bel- 

1 This was Mr. Bryant himself. 



THE POET. 125 

gravia, and pointed out to him the stately rows of 
spacious mansions lately erected to embellish the 
great capital of England ; then passing through 
the Park of St. James, fresh in the beauty of 
early June, he arrived at the gate of a small 
garden. Taking a key from his pocket, he opened 
the gate, and, following a little walk among shrub- 
bery and trees, on which innumerable sparrows 
were chirping, he entered a house by the back 
door, and introduced the American to his own 
home. After he had given him a little time to 
observe the objects of art which it contained, he 
dismissed him by the front door, which opened into 
St. James's Place. 'You see,' he said, 'that I 
have brought you by the nearest way to St. James's 
Place. Remember the house, and come to break- 
fast with me to-morrow morning.' 

" The mention of sparrows in his garden reminds 
us of an anecdote of which they were the subject. 
' I once used to feed sparrows,' said Mr. Rogers ; 
' but one day, when I was throwing them some 
crumbs for their breakfast, a gentleman said to me : 
" Do you see those birds on the tree yonder, how 
they keep aloof, and do not venture down, while 
those on the ground are feasting at their leisure ? 
Those yonder are the females ; these which you 
are feeding are the gentlemen sparrows ; they keep 
their mates at a distance." Since that day I have 
fed sparrows no more.' 

" Rogers began his poetical career early. One 
of his acquaintances was speaking of the little 



126 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

well-known song of his, familiar to our grandmo- 
thers : — 

" ' Dear is my little native vale : 

The ring-dove builds and warbles there ; 

Close by my cot she tells her tale, 
To every passing villager. 

The squirrel leaps from tree to tree, 

And shells his nuts at liberty.' 

" ' I wrote that song at sixteen years of age,' 
said Mr. Rogers. Yet, though the production of 
an immature age, it has all the better characteris- 
tics of his later poetry, and it shows how remarka- 
bly early they were acquired. In his w Pleasures of 
Memory,' very elaborately composed, be adopted 
the carefully measured versification in fashion at 
the time it appeared, with its unvaried periods, 
its antithetic turns, and its voluntary renunciation 
of the power of proportioning the expression to the 
thought. In his i Human Life,' a later and finer 
poem, he shows that his taste had changed with 
the taste of the age ; he broke loose from the old 
fetters, indulging in a freer modulation of num- 
bers, though not parting with any of their har- 
mony and sweetness, and studying a more vigorous 
and direct phraseology. ' Human Life ' is the best 
of his longer poems, and that in which his genius 
is seen to best advantage. It deals with life in its 
gentler and less stormy moods, whether of pleasure 
or of sadness, the sunshine and the shadows of 
common life. The poem is of a kind by which a 
laroe class of readers is interested, and contains 
passages which once read are often recurred to, 
and keep their place in the memory. 



THE POET. 127 

" The illustrated edition of his poems is the only- 
work of the kind with which we are perfectly satis- 
fied. To illustrate adequately by the pencil the 
writings of an eminent poet is one of the most dif- 
ficult undertakings in the world. The fine taste of 
Rogers in the arts and his intimacy with the great- 
est artists of his country gave him a great advan- 
tage in this respect ; and we have heard that the 
designs which embellish that edition of his works 
were selected from a much larger number made 
for that purpose. 

" In approaching the close of a life so much pro- 
longed beyond the usual lot of man, — a life the 
years of which circumscribed the activity of three 
generations, — he contemplated his departure with 
the utmost serenity. The state of man after 
death he called the great subject, and calmly 
awaited the moment when he should be admitted 
to contemplate its mysteries. ' I have found life 
in this world,' he used to say, ' a happy state ; the 
goodness of God has taken care that none of its 
functions, even the most inconsiderable, should be 
performed without sensible pleasure ; and I am 
confident that in the world to come the same care 
for my happiness will accompany me.' 

" Mr. Rogers was of low stature, neither slightly 
nor sturdily proportioned ; his face was rather full 
and broad than otherwise, and his complexion col- 
orless. He always wore a frock-coat. * I will not 
go to court,' he used to say, fc and for one reason 
among others, that I will not wear any other coat 



b 



128 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

than this.' ' The other day,' he once added, ' I 
sent my clothes to the palace, and a man in them.' 
The man whom he meant was Wordsworth, who 
came to London as the guest of Rogers, in order 
to attend court at the bidding of the Queen, and 
to make his acknowledgments for the post of lau- 
reate, which had been bestowed on him. On that 
occasion he wore the court suit of Mr. Rogers, 
whose guest he was. 

" In conversation, Mr. Rogers was one of the 
most agreeable and interesting of men ; he was re- 
markable for a certain graceful laconism, a neat- 
ness and power of selection in telling a story or 
expressing a thought, with its accessories, which 
were the envy of the best talkers of his time. His 
articulation was distinct, just deliberate enough to 
be listened to with pleasure, and during the last 
ten to twelve years of his life slightly — and but 
very slightly — marked with the tremulousness of 
old age. 

" His ordinary manner was kind and paternal ; 
he delighted to relate anecdotes illustrative of the 
power of the affections, which he did with great 
feeling. On occasion, however, he could say caus- 
tic things ; and a few examples of this kind, which 
were so epigrammatic as to be entertaining in their 
repetition, have given rise to the mistake that they 
were frequent in his conversation. His behavior 
to the other sex was uncommonly engaging. He 
was on friendly terms with his eminent literary 
brethren, though they were enemies to each other ; 



TEE POET. 129 

and, notwithstanding that his political opinions 
were those of the liberal school, his intimacies 
knew no party distinctions, and included men of 
the opposite sect." 

The alterations in one of Bryant's poems which 
Irving had allowed himself to make before they 
were published had results which threatened for a 
time to prove most unfortunate. Mr. Leggett, who 
had just established the " Plaindealer," and who 
was justly incensed by a practice more or less pre- 
valent among American publishers of mutilating 
foreign works which they were reprinting, by ex- 
punging passages likely to prove offensive to slave- 
owners, went quite out of his way to charge Irving 
with " literary pusillanimity " for changing in the 
" Song of Marion's Men " the line 

" And the British foeman trembles " 

into 

" The foeman trembles in his camp." 

This article naturally provoked Irving, who had 
recently returned from Madrid, and one of the 
results was a letter to the editor of the " Plain- 
dealer," which I here give entire, as it is now to 
be found, I believe, only in the journals of that pe- 
riod, where it is no longer readily accessible. 

To the Editor of the Plaindealer. 

Sir, — Living at present in the country and out of 
the way of the current literature of the day, it was not 
until this morning that I saw your paper of the 14th of 
January, or knew anything of your animadversions on 
my conduct and character therein contained. Though 



130 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

I have generally abstained from noticing any attack 
upon myself in the public papers, the present is one 
which I cannot suffer to pass in silence. 

In the first place you have censured me strongly for 
having altered a paragraph in the London edition of Mr. 
Bryant's poems ; and the remarks and comparisons in 
which you have indulged on the occasion would seem to 
imply that I have a literary hostility to Mr. Bryant and 
a disposition to detract from the measure of his well- 
merited reputation. 

The relation in which you stand to that gentleman, 
as his particular friend and literary associate, gives 
these animadversions the greater weight, and calls for a 
real statement of the case. 

When I was last in London (I think in 1832), I 
received a copy of the American edition of Mr. Bryant's 
poems from some friend (I now forget from whom), 
who expressed a wish that it might be republished in 
England. I had not at that time the pleasure of a 
personal acquaintance with Mr. Bryant, but I felt the 
same admiration for his poems that you have expressed, 
and was desirous that writings so honorable to Ameri- 
can literature should be known to the British public, and 
take their merited rank in the literature of the language. 
I exerted myself, therefore, to get them republished by 
some London bookseller, but met with unexpected diffi- 
culties, poetry being declared quite unsalable since the 
death of Lord Byron. At length a bookseller was in- 
duced to undertake an edition by my engaging gratui- 
tously to edit the work, and to write something that 
might call public attention to it. I accordingly prefixed 
to the volume a dedicatory letter addressed to Mr. Sam- 
uel Rogers, in which, while I expressed my own opinion 



THE POET. 131 

of the poems, I took occasion to allude to the still more 
valuable approbation which I had heard expressed by 
that distinguished author, thus bringing the work before 
the British public with the high sanction of one of the 
most refined critics of the day. While the work was 
going through the press, an objection was started to the 
passage in the poem of " Marion's Men " — 

" And the British f oeman trembles 
When Marion's name is heard." 

It was considered as peculiarly calculated to shock 
the feelings of British readers on the most sensitive 
point, seeming to call in question the courage of the na- 
tion. It was urged that common decorum required the 
softening of such a passage in an edition exclusively in- 
tended for the British public ; and I was asked what 
would be the feelings of American readers if such an 
imputation on the courage of their countrymen were in- 
serted in a work presented for their approbation. These 
objections were urged in a spirit of friendship to Mr. 
Bryant, and with a view to his success, for it was sug- 
gested that this passage might be felt as a taunt of bra- 
vado, and might awaken a prejudice against the work 
before its merits could be appreciated. 

I doubt whether these objections would have oc- 
curred to me had they not been thus set forth, but when 
thus urged I yielded to them, and softened the passage 
in question by omitting the adjective British, and sub- 
stituting one of a more general signification. If this 
evinced " timidity of spirit," it was a timidity felt en- 
tirely on behalf of Mr. Bryant. I was not to be harmed 
by the insertion of the paragraph as it originally stood. 
I freely confess, however, that I have at all times al- 
most as strong a repugnance to tell a painful or humil- 



132 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

iating truth, unnecessarily, as I have to tell an untruth 
under any circumstances. To speak the truth on all 
occasions is the indispensable attribute of man ; to re- 
frain from uttering disagreeable truths, unnecessarily, 
belongs, I think, to the character of a gentleman ; nei- 
ther, sir, do I think it incompatible with fair dealing, 
however little it may square with your notions of plain- 
dealing. 

The foregoing statement will show how I stand with 
regard to Mr. Bryant. I trust his fame has suffered 
nothing by my republication of his works in London ; 
at any rate, he has expressed his thanks to me by letter, 
since my return to this country. I was therefore, I 
confess, but little prepared to receive a stab from his 
bosom friend. 

Another part of your animadversions is of a much 
graver nature, for it implies a charge of hypocrisy and 
double dealing which I indignantly repel as incompatible 
with my nature. You intimate that " in publishing a 
book of my own, I prepare one preface for my country- 
men full of amor patrice and professions of home feel- 
ing, and another for the London market in which such 
professions are studiously omitted." Your inference is 
that these professions are hollow, and intended to gain 
favor with my countiymen, and that they are omitted in 
the London edition through fear of offending English 
readers. Were I indeed chargeable with such baseness, 
I should well merit the contempt you invoke upon my 
head. As I give you credit, sir, for probity, I was at a 
loss to think on what you could ground such an imputa- 
tion, until it occurred to me that some circumstances 
attending the publication of my " Tour on the Prairies " 
might have given rise to a misconception in your mind. 



THE POET. 133 

It may seem strange to those intimately acquainted 
with my character that I should think it necessary to 
defend myself from a charge of duplicity, but as many 
of your readers may know me as little as you appear to 
do, I must again be excused in a detail of fact. 

When my " Tour on the Prairies " was ready for 
the press, I sent a manuscript copy to England for pub- 
lication, and at the same time put a copy in the press at 
New York. As this was my first appearance before the 
American public since my return, I was induced while 
the work was printing to modify the introduction so as 
to express my sense of the unexpected warmth with 
which I had been welcomed to my native place, and my 
general feelings on finding myself once more at home, 
and among my friends. These feelings, sir, were gen- 
uine, and were not expressed with half the warmth with 
which they were entertained. Circumstances alluded to 
in that introduction had made the reception I met with 
from my countrymen doubly dear and touching to me, 
and had filled my heart with affectionate gratitude for 
their unlooked-for kindness. In fact, misconstructions 
of my conduct and misconceptions of my character, 
somewhat similar to those I am at present endeavoring 
to rebut, had appeared in the public press, and as I er- 
roneously supposed, had prejudiced the mind of my 
countrymen against me. The professions, therefore, to 
which you have alluded were uttered, not to obviate 
such prejudices, or to win my way to the good will of 
my countrymen, but to express my feelings after their 
good will had been unequivocally manifested. While I 
thought they doubted me, I remained silent ; when I 
found they believed in me, I spoke. I have never been 
in the habit of beguiling them by fulsome professions of 



134 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

patriotism, those cheap passports to public favor ; and I 
think I might for once have been indulged in briefly- 
touching a chord, on which others have harped to so 
much advantage. 

Now, sir, even granting I had <fc studiously omitted " 
all those professions in the introduction intended for the 
London market, instead of giving utterance to them 
after that article had been sent off, where, I would ask, 
would have been the impropriety of the act ? What 
had the British public to do with those home greetings 
and those assurances of gratitude and affection which 
related exclusively to my countrymen, and grew out of 
my actual position with regard to them ? There was 
nothing in them at which the British reader could pos- 
sibly take offense ; the omitting of them, therefore, 
could not have argued " timidity," but would have been 
merely a .matter of good taste ; for they would have 
been as much out of place repeated to English readers, 
as would have been my greetings and salutations to my 
family circle, if repeated out of the window for the ben- 
efit of the passers-by in the street. 

I have no intention, sir, of imputing to you any 
malevolent feeling in the unlooked-for attack you have 
made upon me : I can see no motive you have for such 
hostility. I rather think you have acted from honest 
feelings, hastily excited by a misapprehension of facts ; 
and that you have been a little too eager to give an in- 
stance of that " plaindealing " which you have recently 
adopted as your war-cry. Plaindealing, sir, is a great 
merit, when accompanied by magnanimity, and exer- 
cised with a just and generous spirit ; but if pushed too 
far, and made the excuse for indulging every impulse of 
passion or prejudice, it may render a man, especially in 



TEE POET. 135 

your situation, a very offensive, if not a very mischiev- 
ous member of the community. Such I sincerely hope 
and trust may not be your case ; but this hint, given 
in a spirit of caution, not of accusation, may not be of 
disservice to you. 

In the present instance I have only to ask that you 
will give this article an insertion in your paper, being 
intended not so much for yourself, as for those of your 
readers who may have been prejudiced against me by 
your animadversions. Your editorial position, of course, 
gives you an opportunity of commenting upon it accord- 
ing to the current of your feelings ; and whatever may 
be your comments, it is not probable that they will draw 
any further reply from me. Recrimination is a miser- 
able kind of redress in which I never indulge, and I 
have no relish for the warfare of the pen. 

Very respectfully your obedient servant, 

Washington Irving. 

In submitting this letter to his readers, Mr. Leg- 
gett, while modifying in no degree the opinion he 
had expressed of what he deemed the liberty 
Irving had taken with Bryant's verse, took pains 
to relieve Bryant from all responsibility for what 
he had written about it. 

"It is proper," he began his comments, "that we 
should exonerate Mr. Bryant from any lot or part, di- 
rectly or indirectly, in the remarks we made concerning 
what seemed to us (and we must be pardoned for saying 
what still seems to us) a piece of literary pusillanimity 
on the part of Mr. Irving. Whether our censure was 
called for or not, and whether well founded or not, 
we alone are responsible for having uttered it. Mr. 



136 WILLIAM CULLEN BBYANT. 

Bryant's first knowledge of the article, like Mr. Irving's, 
was derived from a perusal of the published ' Plain- 
dealer,' placed in his hands in the regular course of dis- 
tribution to subscribers. Nay, more, to disabuse not 
only Mr. Irving's mind, but the minds of those whom the 
phraseology of his communication in certain parts may 
mislead, candor requires us to state that, on various oc- 
casions, we have heard Mr. Bryant express the kindest 
sentiments towards Mr. Irving for the interest he took 
in the publication of a London edition of his poems, and 
for the complimentary terms in which he introduced 
them to the British public." 

Not content with Le^gett's declaration of his 
innocence of any responsibility for the strictures 
of the " Plaindealer," and a little moved by what 
seemed to him a slightly skeptical tone on this 
point in Irving's letter, Bryant sent to the " Plain- 
dealer " the following : — 

" To the Editor of the Plaindealer. 

" Sir, — I read in your paper of the 28th of 
January a letter from Mr. Irving, partly in answer 
to a censure passed in a previous number upon an 
alteration made by him in the London edition of 
my poems. I was much surprised to find that he 
chose to consider me as in some degree answerable 
for your animadversions. Disliking as I do to 
speak of my private affairs in print, I was glad to 
see that you fully replied to his suspicions by de- 
claring them utterly groundless. I find, however, 
that many of the friends of that distinguished au- 
thor are still determined to make me, in some way 



THE POET. 137 

or other, the instigator of an attack upon him, in 
return for the kindness he had shown in recom- 
mending' my volume to the British public. I must, 
therefore, beg you to print this communication. 

" Let me quote in the first place those passages 
in Mr. Irving's letter which have led me to ask of 
you this favor. Near the beginning he says, allud- 
ing to your animadversions and to me : — 

" ' The relation in which you stand to that 
gentleman as his particular friend and literary 
associate gives these animadversions the greater 
weight, and calls for a real statement of the case.' 

" And again : — 

" c The foregoing statement w T ill show how I stand 
with regard to Mr. Bryant. I trust his fame has 
suffered nothing by my republication of his works 
in London ; at any rate, he has expressed his 
thanks to me by letter since my return to this 
country. I was therefore, I confess, but little pre- 
pared to receive a stab from his bosom friend.' 

" I cannot refrain from again expressing my 
surprise that with the proof of my real feelings in 
his hands, contained in the letter of which he 
speaks, Mr. Irving should have found it possible 
to connect me in any manner with the animadver- 
sions to which he alludes. 

" I must, then, declare briefly that I highly ap- 
preciated the generosity of Mr. Irving in bringing 
my work before the British public with the great 
advantage of his commendation, and that although 
I should not have made the alteration in question, 



138 WILL I AM CULLEN BRYANT. 

I had no doubt that it was made with the kindest 
intentions, and never complained of it to anybody. 
If I had been disposed to complain of it privately, 
it would have been to himself ; if publicly, it would 
have been under my own name ; nor can I compre- 
hend the disingenuous and pusillanimous malignity 
which would have led me to procure another to 
attack in public what I had not even ventured to 
blame in private. 

" It is perhaps best that I should leave the mat- 
ter here ; merely remarking, in conclusion, that 
they who are acquainted with the literary as well 
as the political course of the ' Plaindealer ' know 
very well that its editor is not accustomed to shape 
his censures or his praises according to the opin- 
ions or the desires of others. 

William Cullen Bryant. 

" New York, February 6, 1837." 

The following rejoinder from Irving, which ap- 
peared in the " New York American," closed the 
discussion. Bryant has told us that his explana- 
tion " was graciously accepted, and in a brief note 
in the 6 Plaindealer ' Irving pronounced my ac- 
quittal." It is more difficult for us even now to 
acquit Mr. Leggett for his part in provoking this 
correspondence : — 

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq. 

Sir, — It was not until this moment that I saw your 
letter in the " Plaindealer " of Saturday last. I cannot 
express to you how much it has shocked and grieved 
me. Not having read any of the comments of the editor 



THE POET. 139 

of the " Plaindealer " on the letter which I addressed to 
him, and being in the country, ont of the way of hearing 
the comments of others, I was totally ignorant of the 
construction put upon the passages of that letter which 
you have cited. Whatever construction these passages 
may be susceptible of, I do assure you, sir, I never sup- 
posed, nor had the remotest intention to insinuate that 
you had the least participation in the attack recently 
made upon my character by the editor of the above 
mentioned paper, or that you entertained feelings which 
could in any degree be gratified by such an attack. 
Had I thought you chargeable with such hostility I 
should have made the charge directly and explicitly, 
and not by innuendo. 

The little opportunity that I have had, sir, of judg- 
ing of your private character, has only tended to con- 
firm the opinion I had formed of you from your poetic 
writings, which breathe a spirit too pure, amiable, and 
elevated to permit me for a moment to think you 
capable of anything ungenerous or unjust. 

As to the alteration of a word in the London edition 
of your poems, which others have sought to nurture into 
a root of bitterness between us, I have already stated 
my motives for it, and the embarrassment in which I 
was placed. I regret extremely that it should not have 
met with your approbation, and sincerely apologize to 
you for the liberty I was persuaded to take : a liberty, I 
freely acknowledge, the least excusable with writings 
like yours, in which it is difficult to alter a word without 
marring a beauty. 

Believe me, sir, with perfect respect and esteem, 
Very truly yours, Washington IftviNG. 

Thursday Morning, February l§th. 



140 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

Of Bryant's rank and merits as a poet there is, 
and for some time to come is likely to be, a great 
diversity of opinion. A partial explanation of this 
may be found in the fact that the most enduring 
qualities of his verse are readily appreciated by 
only a comparatively restricted class even of those 
who read poetry. He was essentially an ethical 
poet. His inspiration was always from above. In 
the flower, in the stream, in the tempest, in the 
rainbow, in the snow, in everything about him, 
nature was always telling him something new of 
the goodness of God and framing excuses for the 
frail and the erring. His verses are the record of 
these lessons as far as he apprehended and could 
express them. The number who comprehend the 
full force of them at a single reading, however, is 
comparatively small. Every one of his verses will 
bear the supreme test of a work of literary art, 
which discloses a wider horizon and new merits at 
each successive perusal. 

Bryant's whole life was a struggle, and a mar- 
velously successful struggle, with the infirmities of 
the natural man. In his work, whether as journal- 
ist or poet, the moral elevation of himself and of 
his fellow - creatures was the warp of whatever 
theme might be the woof. But the ethical nature 
is always operating upon two parallel but quite 
separate lines. It is critical and denunciatory when 
dealing with error, and wrong-doing; it is hopeful, 
joyous, and strengthening when it deals with the 
virtues and their triumphs. Bryant confined the 



THE POET. 141 

exercise of the critical function of the moralist 
mainly to his newspaper ; in his verse he sang the 
beauty and joys of holiness. As a journalist, he 
was prone to dwell upon wrongs to be repaired, 
upon evils to be reformed, upon public offenders 
to be punished. But when he donned his sing- 
ing robes and retired from the clash and din of 
worldly strife, he went up into a mountain and 
sat, and angels ministered unto him ; everything 
around him seemed eloquent of hope and cheer, of 
faith and love. The sight of the ' new moon ' brings 

' ' Thoughts of all fair and youthful things — 
The hopes of early years ; 
And childhood's purity and grace, 
And joys that like a rainbow chase 
The passing shower of tears. 

" The captive yields him to the dream 
Of freedom, when that virgin beam 

Comes out upon the air ; 
And painfully the sick man tries 
To fix his dim and burning eyes 

On the sweet promise there. 

"Most welcome to the lovers' sight 
Glitters that pure, emerging light ; 

For prattling poets say, 
That sweetest is the lovers' walk, 
And tenderest is their murmured talk, 

Beneath its gentle ray. 

*' And there do graver men behold 
A type of errors, loved of old, 

Forsaken and forgiven ; 
And thoughts and wishes not of earth 



142 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Just opening- in their early birth, 
Like that new light in heaven." 

The waning moon has its lesson also : — 

' ' In thy decaying beam there lies 

Full many a grave on hill and plain 
Of those who closed their dying eyes 
In grief that they had lived in vain. 

" Another night and thou among 

The spheres of heaven shall cease to shine ; 
All rayless in the glittering throng" 

Whose lustre late was quenched in thine. 

"Yet soon a new and tender light 

From out thy darkened orb shall beam, 
And broaden till it shines all night 

On glistening dew, and glimmering stream." 

In the winds he finds a lesson which he com- 
mends with exquisite grace to the impatient re- 
formers of society. 

" Yet oh, when that wronged Spirit of our race 

Shall break, as soon he must, his long-worn chains 
And leap in freedom from his prison-place, 

Lord of his ancient hills and fruitful plains, 
Let him not rise, like these mad winds of air, 
To waste the loveliness that time could spare, 
To fill the earth with woe, and blot her fair 

Unconscious breast with blood from human veins. 

"But may he like the spring-time come abroad, 
Who crumbles winter's gyves with gentle might 
When in the genial breeze, the breath of God, 

The unsealed springs come spouting up to light ; 
Flowers start from their dark prisons at his feet, 
The woods, long dumb, awake to hymnings sweet, 
And morn and eve, whose glimmerings almost meet, 
Crowd back to narrow bounds the ancient night." 



THE POET. 143 

In the North Star he finds 

" A beauteous type of that unchanging- good, 
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray 
The voyager of time should shape his heedful way." 

March, the most abused of all the months in the 
calendar, has a good word from Bryant. 

* ' The year's departing beauty hides, 
Of wintry storms the sullen threat ; 
But in thy sternest frown abides 
A look of kindly promise yet. 

44 Thou bring' st the hope of those calm skies, 

And that soft time of sunny showers 

When the wide bloom on earth that lies, 

Seems of a brighter world than ours." 

In the beautiful boundless "firmament" he 
finds a charm 

4 * That earth, the proud green earth, has not, 
With all the forms, and hues, and airs, 

That haunt her sweetest spot. 
We gaze upon thy calm pure sphere, 

And read of Heaven's eternal year. 

44 Oh, when amid the throng of men, 

The heart grows sick oil hollow mirth, 

How willingly we turn \\s then 
Away from this cold earth, 

And look into thy aznre breast, 

For seats of innocence and rest ! " 

The " Fringed Gentian " preaches to him of 
Hope and Immortality. 

44 Thou comest not when violets lean 
O'er wandering; brooks and springs unseen, 
Or columbines, in purple dressed. 
Nod o'er the /ground-bird's hidden nest, 



144 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

" Tthou waitest late and com'st alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are flown, 
And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near his end. 

"Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky, 
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

" 1 would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart." 

The river teaches him the processes of moral 
purification : — 

" Oh, glide away from those abodes that bring 
Pollution to thy channel and make foul 
Thy once clear current ; summon thy quick waves 
And dimpling eddies ; linger not, but haste, 
With all thy waters, haste thee to the deep, 
There to be tossed by shifting winds and rocked 
By that mysterious force which lives within 
The sea's immensity, and wields the weight 
Of its abysses, swayi. g to and fro 
The billowy mass, until the stain, at length, 
Shall wholly pass away, and thou regain 
The crystal brightness of thy mountain-spring." 

To those who mourn the supposed degeneracy 
of their time he says : — 

. . . " Despair not of tl. -;ir fate who rise 
To dwell upon the earth whefo we withdraw. 

" Oh no ! a thousand cheerful omens give 
Hope of yet happier days whose dawn is nigh. 

He who has tamed the elements, shall not live 
The slave of his own passions ; h& whose eye 



THE POET. 145 

Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, 
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span 
The sun's broad circle, rising- yet more high, 
In God's magnificent works his will shall scan 
And love and peace shall make their paradise with man." 

Even natural death to him in his poetic mood 
had its sunny aspects. Instead of treating it as a 
penal institution only to be dreaded, the thoughts 
of which " come like a blight " over the spirit, — 

..." and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud and pall, 
And breathless darkness and the narrow house, 
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart," — 

he treats it as " a ministry of life," a change as 
natural, as inevitable, and as beneficent as the 
changes of the seasons, as the change from infancy 
to maturity, from hunger to satiety, ~from sleeping 
to waking, and from waking to sleeping ; as no 
more the penalty of sin than X is the penalty of 
virtue ; a change which the good are just as certain 
to experience as the wicked, the rich as the poor, 
the noble as the peasant. And therefore when 
the summons comes for us to take our 

" Chamber in the silent halls of death," 
we should obey it, not 

" Like the quarry slave at night 
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering tTast, . . . 
Like one who wra^i the drapery of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams." 

There are none who will gainsay any of the 
great truths which Nature was ever teaching this 
most faithful ana devout of her disciples, but the 



/ 
/ 



146 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

number of those who comprehend them is compara- 
tively limited. " Every one that is of the truth 
heareth his voice." But alas ! how many of us are 
still like Pilate, asking u What is truth ? " To such 
— and they unhappily constitute the great body 
of what are commonly denominated " the reading 
public" — the poetry of the passions and the ap- 
petites, the poetry which derives its inspiration 
largely from our sensuous nature, from the lusts of 
the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of 
life, is the most attractive, and therefore most es- 
teemed. But if, as Bryant taught and believed, 
the world's moral standards are steadilv rising, 
and the supersensuous is gaining upon the sensu- 
ous life, or what Paul calls " the rudiments of the 
world ; " if our affections are being gradually lifted 
up from the verdure of the field which to-day is and 
to-morrow is cast iJfto the oven, to the hand that 
clothes the field with this verdure, Bryant's poems 
must grow in popular favor and take a rank in the 
world's esteem which is reserved for no consider- 
able proportion of English verse, justifying the 
prediction of his friend Halleck: — 

" Spring's lovelier flowers for many a day 

Have blossomed on his wandering way ; 

Beings of beauty and decay 

They slumber in their apitumn tomb ; 

But those that graced his cy vn Green River 
And wreathed the lattice of his home, 
Charmed by his song from mortal doom 

Bloom on and will bloom on forever." l 

1 It may interest the readers of these pa^§& to be reminded of 



THE POET. 147 

What has been said will serve to explain the 
fact that Bryant was not the poet of " occasions." 

what has been said of the rank and superior " staying power " of 
ethical poetry by an eminent poet whose genius gives great weight 
to his opinion, whatever may be thought of his example. 

Byron, in the course of his once famous letter to the Rev. Mr. 
Bowles in defense of Pope, wrote : — 

" In my mind the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the 
highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth. Religion 
does not make a part of my subject ; it is something beyond 
human powers, and has failed in all human hands except Milton's 
and Dante's, and even Dante's powers are involved in his delin- 
eation of human passions, though in supernatural circumstances. 
What made Socrates the greatest of men ? His moral truth 
— his ethics. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly 
less than his miracles ? His moral precepts. And if ethics have 
made a philosopher the first of men, and have not been disdained 
as an adjunct to his gospel by the Deity himself, are we to be 
told that ethical poetrj^, or didactic poetry, or by whatever name 
you term it whose object is to make men better and wiser, is not 
the very first order of poetry, and are we to be told this, too, 
by one of the priesthood ? It requires more mind, more wisdom, 
more power, than all the ' forests ' that ever were ' walked ' 
for their description and all the epics that ever were founded 
upon fields of battle. The Georgics are indisputably and, I 
believe, undisputedly even a finer poem than the -^Eneid. Virgil 
knew this. He did not order their, to be burnt. 

" The proper study of mankind is man. It is the fashion of the 
day to lay great stress upon what they call ' imagination ' and 
' invention,' the two commonest of qualities : an Irish peasant 
with a little whiskey in his head will imagine and invent more 
than would furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius had not 
been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far 
superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry it is the 
first of Latin poems. What, then, had ruined it ? His ethics. 
Pope has not this defect. His moral is as pure as his poetry is 
glorious. ... If any great natural or national convulsion could 
or should overwhelm your country in such sort as to sweep Great 
Britain from the kingdoms of the earth and leave only that, after 



148 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

His muse was never prostituted to the service of 
his own or any public vanity or passion. When he 
put on his singing robes there was always some- 
thing more or less pontifical in the rites that were 
to be celebrated. The spirit of poesy descended 
upon him only upon the Sabbaths of his soul. He 
seemed to lay aside for the time all worldly con- 
siderations, and to hold communion with the spirits 
of the just made perfect. If he took an occasion 
or a name for his theme, it must be one standing 
in universal and everlasting relations with human- 
ity. He was, of course, constantly appealed to, to 
lend dignity to events of transient interest and 
local importance, and his ingenuity was constantly 
taxed to provide excuses for declining to become 
the poetical interpreter of fleeting popular emo- 
tions. 

In a letter to Mr. Charles Sedgwick in 1865, 
he said : — 

" It is not my intention to deliver a poem at 
Williams College, or anywhere else. I once deliv- 
ered a Phi Beta Kappa poem at Cambridge, and that 

all, the most living* of human things, a dead language, to be studied 
and read and imitated by the wise of future and far generations, 
upon foreign shores ; if your literature should become the learning 
of mankind, divested of party cabals, temporary fashions, and na- 
tional pride and prejudice, an Englishman anxious that the pos- 
terity should know that there had been such a thing as a British 
Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the preservation of Shake- 
speare and Milton; but the surviving world would snatch Pope 
from the wreck and let the rest sink witlV the people. He is the 
moral poet of all civilization ; and as such let us hope that he 
will one day be the national poet of mankind." 



THE POET. 149 

was forty-four years ago, but since that time I have 
uniformly declined all requests to do the like, and I 
get several every year. It is an undertaking for 
young men. If I could be put back to twenty-six 
years and my wife with me, I might do it again ; 
youth is the season for such imprudence. I should 
never be able to satisfy myself in the composition of 
a poem on such an occasion ; and then it should be an 
exceedingly clever thing, — not a work for the 
closet, though ; and admirably read — read as you 
would read it, and as few can, not to bore the audi- 
ence. You have observed that such poems, with 
few, very few exceptions, are unspeakably tiresome." 
Writing to his brother John in 1 874, he says : — 
" The poem you speak of I suppose you hardly 
expected me to compose. Such things as occa- 
sional poems I have for many years left to younger 
men ; besides which there is nothing more tire- 
some and flat than a poem read at a public cele- 
bration of any event ; nothing more unintelligible, 
unless the poem be read with exceeding skill, and 
the better the poem is, the less, as a general rule, 
it is understood by a promiscuous assembly. The 
only use of verses on such occasions is when they 
take the shape of a short ode and are sung." 

It was not, I think, merely a distaste, strong as it 
was, for this kind of work, but a well-grounded 
distrust of his ability to succeed in it, which in 
many if not most of these cases controlled his de- 
cision. It seems as though his muse could only 
breathe in the Empyrean. It would have stifled 



150 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

in the mephitism of Grub Street. Anything that 
localized or temporized his theme seemed to par- 
alyze him. There were some circumstances in the 
condition of the country in 1838, just after Presi- 
dent Jackson's successful battle with nullification, 
which persuaded him that he should accept an in- 
vitation from the New York Historical Society to 
deliver a poem before that body on the occasion of 
its fiftieth anniversary, when John Quincy Adams 
w r as to deliver the oration. He wrote the poem in 
four stanzas, to be sung by the choir, beginning 

* ' Great were the hearts, and strong- the minds, 
Of those who framed in high debate 
The immortal league of Love that binds 
Our fair, broad empire, State with State." 

It appeared to suit everybody but himself. It 
was a temple that had not been built as he thought 
the temples of the muses should always be built, 
without the noise of hammer or of axe. He never 
included it in any collection of his works. 

He was requested to prepare an ode for the 
opening ceremonies at the Universal Exhibition 
of the Centennial year at Philadelphia. In his 
reply to Mr. Hawley, the president of the commis- 
sion, he said : — 

" I am sensible of the compliment paid me in 
requesting me to compose a poem for the Centen- 
nial Exhibition at Philadelphia. It will not be in 
my pow r er to comply with the request for several 
reasons. One is old age, which is another form of 
ill-health, and implies a decline of both the bodily 



THE POET. 151 

and mental faculties. Another is the difficulty of 
satisfying myself in writing verses for particular 
occasions, a circumstance which has of late caused 
me to decline all applications of this nature." 

Set into an old Roman wall in an old town in 
the south of France may still be seen a memorial 
stone, on which are inscribed the words Saltavit 
et placuit. This is all the record we have of the 
life-work of a Roman slave who died at the age of 
fifteen. He was a popular favorite. He danced 
and he pleased. The same epitaph would answer 
for many popular poets. If Dryden had " de- 
bauched the stage," he said, " it was to please the 
prince ; " claiming in the words of the well-worn 
couplet that 

"The Drama's laws, the Drama's patrons give, 
And they who live to please must please to live." 

Dr. Young also saltavit et placuit. He felt con- 
strained to omit from the collection of what he 
termed his " Excusable Poems " many addressed 
to the people of the highest rank in England ; 
such as his " Epistle to Lord Lansdowne," his 
dedication of " The Last Day " to Queen Anne ; 
and of "The Force of Religion or Vanquished 
Love " to the Countess of Salisbury ; " The Poem 
on the Accession of George I.," and several others. 

Bryant's muse begat no offspring which his de- 
scendants will ever blush to recognize. 

It was Bryant's notion that the life should be a 
true poem of him who would himself be a true 



152 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

poet. Like Milton he drew the inspiration of his 
poems " neither from the heat of youth nor from 
the vapours of wine like that which flows at waste 
from the pen of some vulgar amourist or the 
trencher fury of some rhyming parasite," but 
from 

' ' Siloa's brook that flows 
Fast by the Oracle of God." 

It is one of his great distinctions that he never 
wrote a line, either in verse or prose, that coun- 
tenanced a degrading impulse, an unclean thought, 
a mischievous propensity, or an unmanly act ; and 
this too in a period of our literature when for none 
of the poets most read could their most ardent 
admirers claim any one of these distinctions. 
Bacon pleaded the distinction between vitia tem- 
poris and vitia hominis in palliation of his offi- 
cial venality. Whatever force this distinction 
may have had in Bacon's case, it cannot be in- 
voked to diminish in any degree the exceptional 
merit of Bryant's example. When he began to 
be known as a poet, the reign of baseness and bru- 
tality in literature which followed the restoration 
of the Stuarts in England, and " which," said 
Macaulay, "never could be recalled without a 
blush," had not come to an end. The most popu- 
lar poets at the beginning of this century owed no 
inconsiderable share of their popularity to verses 
which would now scarcely receive hospitality from 
any respectable periodical. It is, we hope, with a 
pardonable pride that we allow ourselves to ob- 



THE POET. 153 

serve that the same exalted sense of the poet's 
calling has characterized all the verse written in 
the English tongue on this side of the Atlantic 
that has enjoyed any considerable measure of pop- 
ular favor. Following his own advice to the poet, 
slightly paraphrased, — 

" He let no empty gust 

Of passion find an utterance in his lay, 
A blast that whirls the dust 

Along" the crowded street and dies away ; 
But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep, 
Like currents journeying through the windless deep." 

As water in crystallizing excludes all foreign in- 
gredients, and out of acids, alkalies, and other solu- 
tions yields a crystal of perfect purity and sweet- 
ness, so his thoughts in passing into verse seemed 
to separate themselves from everything that was 
transient or vulgar. His poems have ccftne to us 
as completely freed from every trace of what is 
of the earth earthy as if, like St. Luke's pictures, 
they had received their finishing touch from the 
angels. 

Of poetic inspiration or the state of mind in 
which poetry of a high order is produced, — that 
exaltation of the faculties in which high thoughts 
come into the mind and clothe themselves in apt 
words, — Bryant's views serve to illustrate the 
statement already made, that he was not a man of 
moods and tenses, and that his seasons for produc- 
tive labor did not alternate like the seasons of the 
calendar year, or the ebb and flow of the tides. 



154 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT 

" I cannot say," he wrote to a gentleman who 
had addressed him some inquiries upon the sub- 
ject, " that in writing my poems I am directly 
conscious of the action of an outside intelligence, 
but I sometimes wonder whence the thoughts come, 
and they seem to me hardly my own. Sometimes 
in searching for the adequate expression, it seems 
suddenly darted into my mind like a ray of light 
into a dark room, and gives me a kind of sur- 
prise. I don't invoke the muse at all. 

" It appears to me that inspiration has no more 
to do with one intellectual process than another, 
and that if there is such a thing it might be present 
as directly in the solutions of a problem of high 
mathematics as in a copy of verses." 

Bryant seems never to have attempted to place 
his fame under the protection of a long poem. Of 
the one hundred and sixty poems which he left us, 
the average length is only seventy-five lines. He 
did not believe in long poems. It was a theory of 
his that short poems might perhaps be chained to- 
gether with links of verse, so as to add some to 
their commercial but not to their poetical value ; 
that a long poem was as impossible as a long ecs- 
tasy ; that what is called a long poem, like " Para- 
dise Lost " and the " Divine Comedy," is a mere 
succession of poems strung together upon a thread 
of verse ; the thread of verse serving sometimes to 
popularize them by adapting them to a wider range 
of literary taste, or a more sluggish intellectual 
digestion. He was often urged by his friend 



THE POET. 155 

Dana, and indeed by most of his intimate friends, 
to undertake a long poem. In his younger days 
he seems to have dreamed of such a work, but 
early came to the conclusion that there was no 
such thing as a long poem, and if there was, that 
Apollo had not provided him with the sort of lyre 
to render it. Loyalty to his journal, too, may 
have had something to do with his never attempt- 
ing it. Those who are most familiar with Bryant's 
poetry will now probably be agreed that the ethi- 
cal, which in the language of a sister art is called 
the motif, of all his verse in which reflection ruled, 
subordinating if not excluding all the demonstra- 
tions of passion, would be fatal to the success of a 
long poem. 

William Walsh, whom Dryden pronounced the 
best critic of his time in England, gave Pope a bit 
of advice which has become famous : " We had 
had great poets," he said, " but never one great 
poet that was correct," and he accordingly recom- 
mended Pope to make correctness his great aim. 

Of the wisdom of this advice Bryant seems to 
have been more thoroughly penetrated than the 
poet to whom it was addressed. The correctness 
of his measure and the conscientious fidelity of his 
rhymes are apt to arrest the attention and compel 
the admiration of even the careless reader. No poet 
probably ever knew better than he the technique 
of the art of " building the lofty rhyme." Dana 
urged him to write a book on the laws of metre, 
of which at a very early age he had made himself 



156 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

a master. And yet, though critics concur in pro- 
nouncing his verse unfailingly graceful and melo- 
dious, Mr. Bryant had no ear nor taste for music. 
Whatever inconvenience or loss of enjoyment he 
may have experienced from this insensibility, there 
is no evidence that either his verse or prose suf- 
fered in consequence, while both, as asserted by an 
accomplished English critic, " partook in an emi- 
nent degree of that curious and almost rarefied 
refinement in which oddly enough American liter- 
ature seems to surpass even the literature of the 
Old World." ! 

1 The French poet Malherbe exhibits another instance of a 
poet who was a master of versification, though like Bryant des- 
titute of the musical sense. D'Alembert says of him : — 

" Malherbe, dont le vrai m^rite est d 1 avoir mis le premier, dans 
les vers frangais, de Yharmonie et de Veh'gance, comme l'a dit lui- 
meme avec tant d* elegance et d ? harmonie le l^gislateur Des- 
preaux. 

" On prdtend que ce meme Malherbe, si sensible a 1'harmonie 
des vers, et qui en a ^te* le cr^ateur parmi nous, £tait absolument 
d^mele" d' oreille pour la musique. Plus d'un homme de lettres 
ce'lebre a ^te* dans ce cas, et meme en a fait Taveu. Juste Lipse 
et Manage ^taient de ce nombre, sans parler de beaucoup d'au- 
tres. Le second de ces deux savans f aisait pourtant des vers en 
quatre langues, en latin, en grec, en italien et mime en frangais. 
Cette insensibility musicale, meme dans un poete, est peut-etre 
moins surprenante qu'on ne pourrait le croire. La melodie du 
chant et celle des vers quoiquelles aient pour ainsi dire quelques 
points d r attouchement communs sont trop sdpar^es et trop diff^- 
rents a d'autres ^gards, pour qu'une oreille vivement affected de 
l'une, soit necessairement entrained et subjugu^e par 1' autre, sur- 
tout si la melodie musicale est renforce'e, pour ne pas dire trou- 
bled par les effets bruyants de 1'harmonie moderne : effets que 
1' oreille delicate des anciens parait n'avoir pas sentis ou peut- 
etre qu'elle a reprouv^s." 



THE POET. 157 

By some process as mysterious as the leafing of 
the forests or the swelling of the tides, Bryant 
managed to make himself familiar with most of the 
languages of the world that had a literature. Like 
Sir Henry Wotton, — 

" So many languages had he in store 
That only fame could speak of him in more/' 

Besides an acquaintance with the Greek and 
Latin tongues, which many who have made these 
studies a specialty might have envied, he had a 
critical knowledge of German, French, Spanish, 
Portuguese, Italian, and modern Greek, to which 
during his travels in the East he added more than 
a smattering of Arabic. When it is borne in 
mind that he acquired them all in the leisure econ- 
omized from one of the most unrelenting profes- 
sions, we can realize the amazing faculty, the high 
discipline and admirable husbandry of time and 
force, which enabled him like Ulysses M to do so 
many things so well." The French say, " Ce qui 
n'est pas clair n'est pas Fran^ais." Bryant thought 
that verses that were obscure were not poetry. 
His constitutional aversion to sham of all kinds no 
doubt had its share in begetting this aversion. He 
would as soon have invoked the aid of a brass band 
to secure an audience as to lend himself to any 
meretricious devices for extorting admiration. 
Such he regarded all surprising novelties of ex- 
pression and all subtleties of thought which the 
common apprehension does not readily accept. He 
felt that no poem was fit to leave his hand if a 



158 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

word or a line in it betrayed affectation or required 
study to be understood. 

His doctrine upon this subject is thus briefly set 
forth in his introduction to " A Library of Poetry 
and Song : " — 

" To me it seems that one of the most impor- 
tant requisites for a great poet is a luminous style. 
The elements of poetry lie in natural objects, in 
the vicissitudes of human life, in the emotions of 
the human heart, and the relations of man to man. 
He who can present them in combinations and 
lights which at once affect the mind with a deep 
sense of their truth and beauty is the poet for his 
own age and the ages that succeed him. . . . The 
metaphysician, the subtle thinker, the dealer in 
abstruse speculations, whatever his skill in versifi- 
cation, misapplies it when he abandons the more 
convenient form of prose, and perplexes himself 
with the attempt to express his ideas in poetic num- 
bers." 

In a letter to the Century Club, on the occasion 
of Bryant's seventieth birthday, Edward Everett 
pays a special tribute to this quality of the poet's 
verse. 

" I particularly enjoy Bryant's poetry because I can 
understand it. It is probably a sign that I am some- 
what behind the age, that I have but little relish for 
elaborate obscurity in literature, of which you find it 
difficult to study out the meaning and are not sure you 
have hit upon it at last. This is too much the charac- 
ter of the modern English school. . . . Surprise, con- 



THE POET. 159 

ceit, strange combinations of imagery and expression 
may be successfully managed, but it is merit of an in- 
ferior kind. The truly beautiful, pathetic, and sub- 
lime is always simple and natural and marked by a 
certain serene unconsciousness of effort. This is the 
character of Mr. Bryant's poetry." 

He often amused himself with translating from 
foreign tongues the verses that particularly pleased 
him, and there were very few thus honored by his 
choice that were not to be congratulated upon the 
new garb in which he arrayed them. Later in 
life, and when invention became too fatiguing to 
be more than an occasional resource, he found in 
translation an agreeable employment. We find 
the first intimation of this in a note to Dana dated 
May, 1863. 

" I have been looking over Cowper's translation 
of Homer lately, and comparing it with the origi- 
nal. It has astonished me that one who wrote 
such strong English in his original compositions 
should have put Homer, who wrote also with sim- 
plicity and spirit, into such phraseology as he has 
done. For example, when Ulysses in the fifth 
book of the Odyssey asks ' What will become of 
me.' Cowper makes him say : — 

" ' What destiny at last attends me ? ' 

and so on. The greater part is in such stilted 
phrase, and all the freedom and fire of the old 
poet is lost." 

Old age affected the quantity rather than the 
quality of Bryant's verse. We have lines written 



160 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

after lie was eighty which will compare not unfa- 
vorably with anything he had written before. But 
his inspiration came at longer intervals, and for 
obvious reasons was less fervently invited. After 
seventy, when the grasshopper becomes a burden, 
he sought pleasant rather than exciting occupation 
for his mind, and this he found in transferring into 
English blank verse the works of the great master 
of Epic Poetry. " I find it a pastime," he wrote 
to his friend, Professor Alden. " At my time of life 
it is somewhat dangerous to tax the brain to any 
great extent. Whatever requires invention, w T hat 
ever compels one to search both for new thoughts 
and adequate expressions wherewith to clothe them, 
makes a severe demand on the intellect and the 
nervous system, — at least I have found it so. In 
translating poetry, — at least in translating with 
such freedom as blank verse allows, — my only 
trouble is with the expression ; the thoughts are 
already at hand." 

It is with poets as w T ith other men. When they 
are old they shall stretch forth their hands and an- 
other shall gird them. It was Bryant's choice not 
unnaturally when the time came for him to be 
girded to choose one of his own kind to gird him ; 
to supply him with the invention and the thoughts 
for which he should only be required to supply 
the raiment. 

In the fall of 1863, a translation of some pas- 
sages from the fifth book of the Odyssey- with 
which he had been amusing himself appeared in 



THE POET. 161 

the " Atlantic Monthly," and at the close of 1863, 
he republished it in a collection of his more recent 
verses, which appeared under the somewhat depress- 
ing title of " Thirty Poems." The reception it 
met with from scholars as well as poets was so en- 
couraging that he tried his hand with some pas- 
sages of the Iliad. The death of Mrs. Bryant in 
the summer of 1866 increased his indisposition 
for severe work and his need for distracting em- 
ployment. The translations from Homer answered 
this purpose so well that he finally resolved to 
translate the whole of the Iliad. He sailed on his 
sixth voyage to Europe in October of that year 
with a copy of Homer in his pocket, and a fixed 
purpose of rendering at least forty lines of the old 
Greek into English every day. He frequently ex- 
ceeded this number, and as he became inured to the 
work, not unfrequently increased the number to 
seventy-five. This was his early morning work, 
and even after his return was never allowed to in- 
terfere with his customary professional avocations. 
Writing to his brother John in February, 1869, 
he said : " I have just finished my translation of 
the twelfth book of Homer's Iliad. In regard 
to what you say about Homer I would observe 
that Pope's translation is more periphrastic than 
mine and will probably have several thousand 
more lines. I have yet somewhat more than 
seven thousand of the original to translate. Yes- 
terday I translated sixty of the Greek, making 
some seventy or eighty in my shorter blank verse, 



162 WILL [AM CULLEN BRYANT. 

but generally I cannot do so much, — sometimes 
not more than forty." 

These first twelve books of his version of the 
Iliad were published by Fields, Osgood & Co., 
of Boston, in February, 1870, and the second vol- 
ume, containing the remainder of the poem, in 
June of the same year. In the preface he informs 
us that he began the work in 1865, but afterwards 
gave himself up to it the more willingly because it 
helped in some measure to divert his mind from a 
great domestic sorrow. " I am not sure," he adds, 
" that, when it shall be concluded, it may not cost 
me some regret to part with so interesting a com- 
panion as the old Greek poet, with whose thoughts 
I have for four years past been occupied, though 
with interruptions, in the endeavor to transfer 
from his own grand musical Greek to our less so- 
norous but still manly and flexible tongue." 

He tells us of his endeavor to be strictly faithful 
in his rendering, " to add nothing of his own, and 
to give the reader, so far as our language would 
allow, all that he found in the original." He was 
at equal pains, he assures us, to preserve the sim- 
plicity of style of the old poet, " who wrote for the 
popular ear and according to the genius of his 
language. I have chosen such English as offers 
no violence to the ordinary usages and structure of 
our own. I have sought to attain what belongs to 
the original — affluent narrative style which shall 
carry the reader forward without the impediment 
of unexpected inversions and capricious phrases, 



THE POET. 163 

and in which, if he find nothing to stop at and 
admire, there will at least be nothing to divert his 
attention from the story and the characters of the 
poem, from the events related and the objects de- 
scribed." He disagrees with Pope, who doubted 
whether a poem could be supported without rhyme 
in our language, unless stiffened with such strong 
words as would destroy the language itself. 
Bryant assigns as his reason for choosing blank 
verse for his Homer, that it enabled him to keep 
more closely to the original without any sacrifice 
either of ease or spirit. " The use of rhyme in a 
translation is a constant temptation to petty in- 
fidelities, and to the employment of expressions 
which have an air of constraint and do not the 
most adequately convey the thought." He did 
not adopt the ballad measure because the Homeric 
poems seemed to him beyond the popular ballads 
of any modern nation in reach of thought and in 
richness of phraseology. " If I had adopted that 
form of poetry," he says, " there would have been 
besides the disadvantage of rhyme, a temptation 
to make the version conform in style and spirit to 
the old ballads of our own literature in a degree 
which the original does not warrant, and which, as 
I think, would lead to some sacrifice of its dignity." 
Bryant's reasons for preferring blank verse for 
this poem all have weight, and with a translator 
approaching his eightieth year they were conclu- 
sive. But no one can doubt that the position 
which Pope's version of Homer holds in our liter- 



164 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

ature is very largely due to its measure and rhyme, 
nor that Bryant's translation would have been more 
widely popular, if less faithful, had it been tuned 
like Pope's to the popular ear. But to a person so 
conscientious about his rhymes, about the correct- 
ness of his verse and the fidelity of his translation, 
as Bryant, the use of rhyme implied an enormous 
increase of labor from which he shrank, and which 
would have deprived his task of what to him was 
its chief attraction, its recreatory character. Had 
he undertaken this task twenty or even ten years 
earlier, and given it the charm of rhyme, it would 
probably have soon extinguished forever all popu- 
lar interest in every other translation in our lan- 
guage. Whether it would have stood as high in the 
estimation of scholars, whether the proportions of 
Homer to Bryant in it would have been the same 
as in this version, we have his own authority for 
doubting, but we should certainly have had a 
Homer which would have fascinated a larger num- 
ber. Without rhyme, however, it was a great lit- 
erary success. It was received with unqualified 
admiration by the highest poetical and scholarly 
authorities as well as by the press of his country. 

" It is commended," he wrote to Dana, "in quar- 
ters where my original poems are, I suspect, not 
much thought of, and I sometimes fancy that pos- 
sibly it is thought that I am more successful as a 
translator than in anything else, which you know 
is not the highest praise. I did not find the work 
of rendering Homer into blank verse very fa- 



THE POET. 165 

tiguing, and perhaps it was the most suitable liter- 
ary occupation for an old man like me, who feels 
the necessity of being busy about something and 
yet does not like hard work." 

To his old pastor, Dr. Dewey, he wrote : — 
" I can imagine that on laying down the volume 
you drew a long breath of relief — one of those 
grateful sighs significant alike of the trouble that 
has been taken and the satisfaction we feel that it 
is over. Do you remember Pope's line : — 

" ' And Congreve loved and Swift endured my lays ' ? 

It is not every poet, that has a friend capable of 
enduring four hundred pages of his verse. 

" I am really glad that you can speak so kindly 
of my translation. It is well received so far, and 
sells well, I 'm told, for so costly a publication. I 
am almost ashamed to see it got up in so expensive 
a manner. Democrat as I am, I would, if the mat- 
ter had been left to my discretion, have published 
it in as cheap a form as is consistent with neatness 
and a good fair legible type. I like very well to 
see it in that large type, but I should have made 
it a book for persons of small means, that is to say 
if they chose to buy it." 

Bryant realized, as he had apprehended he 
should, that the old Greek poet was too interesting 
a companion to part with without regret, and he 
determined, therefore, to postpone their parting as 
long as possible. Before the Iliad was through 
the press he had begun to translate the Odyssey, 



166 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Writing to his brother John on the 1st of July, 
1870, he says : — 

" I have begun the translation of the Odyssey, 
but I do not intend to hurry the task, nor even to 
translate with as much diligence as I translated 
the Iliad ; so I may never finish it. Bat it will 
give me an occupation which will not be an irk- 
some one, and will furnish me with a reason for 
declining other literary tasks and a hundred other 
engagements which I want some other excuse be- 
sides old age for declining." 

The feeling that the number of working days in 
reserve for him at the most was very limited had 
its effect in securing for the Odyssey a precedence 
among his numerous engagements which had not 
been accorded to the Iliad, for by the close of 
April, 1871, the first volume of twelve books was 
in the printer's hands, and, before the year closed, 
the whole work was ready for the press. " There 
was no need," he wrote his publisher in April, 
" that you should exhort me to be diligent in put- 
ting the Odyssey into blank verse. I have been 
as industrious as was reasonable. I understand 
very well that at my time of life such enterprises 
are apt to be brought to a conclusion before they 
are finished. And I have therefore wrought harder 
upon my task than some of my friends thought 
was well for me. I have already sent forward 
the MSS. for the first volume. You may remem- 
ber that I finished my translation of the Iliad 
within the time that I undertook, and this would 



THE POET. 167 

have been done without any urging. In the ease 
of the Odyssey, I have finished the first volume 
two months sooner than I promised. I do not 
think the Odyssey the better part of Homer except 
morally. The gods set a better example and take 
more care to see that wrong and injustice are dis- 
couraged among mankind. But there is not the 
same spirit and fire, nor the same vividness of de- 
scription, and this the translator must feel as 
strongly as the reader. Let me correct what I 
have already said by adding that there is yet in 
the Odyssey one more advantage over the Iliad. 
It is better as a story. In the Iliad the plot is, to 
me, unsatisfactory, and there is, besides, a monot- 
ony of carnage — you get a surfeit of slaughter." 

Again, on the 18th of June following, he writes 
to Dana : — 

" I do not feel quite so easy in work as I did in 
translating the Iliad, for the thought that I am so 
old that I may be interrupted in my task before it 
is done rises in my mind now and then, and I 
work a little the more diligently for it, which per- 
haps is not so well." 

Writing to his publishers in July, he betrayed 
the consciousness that he was getting nervous about 
finishing his work : — 

" As I have finished another book of the Odys- 
sey, I forward it to-day. But do not let your 
printers tread on my heels. It is disagreeable to be 
dunned for copy, and I cannot write as well when 
I have any vexation of that sort on my mind." 



168 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

On tlie 7th of December, 1871, Bryant addressed 
the following brief note to his publishers : " I 
have sent you by mail the twenty-fourth and con- 
cluding book of my translation of Homer's Odys- 
sey together with the table of contents for the sec- 
ond volume." It was in this unceremonious way 
he took leave of a task which had been his chief 
solace and recreation for six long years. Perhaps 
he dared not trust himself to say more of such a 
parting. 

The reception of Bryant's Homer by his country 
people could not have been more cordial. Every 
one seemed proud of it. The conviction rapidly 
took possession of the scholarly public that the old 
Greek had never before been brought so near 
to readers of English, and that our literature 
had been permanently and substantially enriched. 
Neither of these convictions is likely to be shaken. 
No scholar has made the criticism of Bryant's 
Homer that Bentley made of Pope's. 1 Nor did 
any one ever claim to share with him the credit of 
any portion of his work. 2 While giving his read- 
ers the genuine spirit of Homer, Bryant has also 

1 " A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer. " 

2 A large portion of the translation of the Odyssey appears now 
to have been done by a better scholar than Pope named Broome, 
and all the learning- in the notes was gathered by him. Pope's 
reluctance to recognize the services of his collaborators provoked 
no end of lampoons, of which the following is one of the clever- 
est: — 

" By tricks sustained in poet-craft complete 
Retire triumphant to thy Twickenham seat. 
That seat the work of half-paid drudging Broome, 
And called by joking Tritons Homer's tomb," 



THE POET, 169 

given them one of the finest specimens of pure 
Saxon English in our literature. It will reward 
the curiosity of the philologist to note the large 
j)roportion of words of one syllable, the scarcity of 
words of three or more syllables, and the yet more 
conspicuous absence of words of Greek or Latin 
derivation. 

The sale of the work was to Mr. Bryant at least 
one gratifying evidence of its merit. Up to May, 
1888, 17,000 copies of the Iliad had been sold, 
yielding him in royalties $12,738. Of the Odys- 
sey, 10,244 copies, yielding in royalties $4,713, 
making a total income from these translations up 
to the spring of 1888 of $17,451. 

There is a moral for publishers and authors in 
the circumstance that while 3,283 copies of the 
more costly 8vo edition of the Iliad were selling, 
5,449 copies of the 12mo edition in two volumes 
were disposed of. The royalties from the cheaper 
editions amounted to $4,713.60, while the royalties 
from the other edition amounted only to $811.80. 
This is exclusive of the copyright of $2,500, paid 
on the day of publication. Of the large paper 
copies of the Odyssey only 1,615 copies were 
sold to 7,229 of the cheaper editions, yielding roy- 
alties from the former of $321.05, "and $2,392 
from the latter. 

In looking at the financial side of this publica- 
tion one is irresistibly tempted to compare it with 
the only publication which invites such a compari- 
son — the version of Homer made by Pope in the 



170 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

first quarter of the last century, 1 which Johnson 
called " the noblest version of poetry the world 
has ever seen," which the poet Gray said some- 
what rashly no other translation would ever equal, 
and to which Gibbon ascribed " every merit but 
that of faithfulness to the original." Pope's Iliad 
was published in six volumes, for each of which 
Lintot, his publisher, was to pay ,£200, besides 
supplying Pope gratuitously with the copies for 
which he procured subscribers. The subscribers 
paid a guinea a volume, and as 575 subscribers 
took 654 copies, Pope received altogether £5,320 4s. 
By the Odyssey he seems to have made about 
£3,500 more, yielding a total profit of about 
£9,000. So that he could say with truth, " Thanks 
to Homer," he " could live and thrive, indebted to 
no prince or peer alive." 

" No author," says Leslie Stephen, 2 " had ever 
made anything approaching the sum which Pope 
received, and very few authors, even in the pres- 
ent age of gold, would despise such payment." 

The returns to Bryant from his Homer in about 
the same period of time after publication were but 
about $20,000 as against the returns to Pope of say 
$45,000, a little more than one third the latter sum. 
On the other hand, Pope's receipts were all realized 
mainly from the sale of only 654 copies or there- 
aboutSo How many Lintot sold we do not know, 
but probably not more than as many more, or, at 

i 1715-1726. 

2 Alexander Pope, in English Men of Letters, p. 62. 



THE POET. 171 

most, a thousand copies, which would make a total 
of 1,654 copies, while the sales of Bryant's version 
amounted to 17,000 copies, or more than ten times 
the number sold of Pope's version. 

When it is considered that Bryant made no per- 
sonal appeal to his friends and admirers, as Pope 
did, to buy his book ; that he had no touter like 
Swift to bustle about in the ante-chambers of 
royalty, button-holing every considerable man he 
met, to say, mutatis mutandis, " the best poet in 
America has begun a translation into English 
verse, for which he must have them all subscribe, 
for the author shall not begin to print till I have a 
thousand guineas for him;" and that he never pre- 
sented a copy of this or of any other publication of 
his with the view of securing a notice or review of 
it, 1 the success of his translation financially cannot 
be deemed to suffer by the comparison with its 
only rival. 

It deserves to be noted here also that Pope, when 
he finished his Homer, was on the hither side of 
forty, and Bryant, when he finished his, was on the 
thither side of eighty. 

1 Not long after the publication of his Thirty Poems, Bryant 
wrote to Dana : — 

" Acting on your suggestion, I have sent a copy of my Thirty 
Poems to President Hopkins, of Williams College, and have 
received from him a very kind note. In a letter to him accom- 
panying the volume, I made you responsible for my sending it, 
for I never in my life sent a copy of my poems to anybody with 
the design to get a good word from them or to invite their notice 
of my writings in print." 



172 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Of the financial returns of his other poetical 
works we have no precise information, but it is 
quite safe to say that he realized many times as 
much from his Homer as from all the other verses 
he ever wrote. We have ample confirmation of 
this conclusion in two letters written, one in the 
earlier stage of his career, and the other near to 
its close. 

Writing to Dana in April, 1832, and shortly 
after the publication of the volume of poems which 
Irving introduced to the British public, he said : — 

" You ask about the sale of the book. Mr. 
Bliss tells me it is very good for poetry. I printed 
a thousand copies, and more than half are disposed 
of. As to the price, it may be rather high at 
$1.25, but I found that, with what I should give 
away and what the booksellers would take, little 
would be left for me if a rather high price was not 
put upon it. And so I told the publisher to fix it 
at a dollar and a quarter. If the whole impression 
sells it will bring me $300, perhaps a little more. 
I hope you do not think that too much. I have 
sent the volume out to England, and Washington 
Irving has had the kindness to undertake to intro- 
duce it to the English public. . . . As for the 
lucre of the thing on either side of the water, an 
experience of twenty-five years — for it is so long 
since I became an author — has convinced me that 
poetry is an unprofitable trade, and I am very 
glad that I have something more certain to depend 
upon for a living." 



THE POET. 173 

Later on in his experience he spoke of the poet- 
ical market with even less indulgence. 

To Dana : — 

" After all, poetic wares are not for the market 
of the present day. Poetry may get printed in the 
newspapers, but no man makes money by it for 
the simple reason that nobody cares a fig for 
it. The taste for it is something old-fashioned ; 
the march of the age is in another direction ; man- 
kind are occupied with politics, railroads, and 
steamboats. Hundreds of persons wdll talk flip- 
pantly and volubly about poetry, and even write 
about it, who know no more of the matter, and 
have no more feeling of the matter, than the old 
stump I w T rite this letter with." 

The artistic taste of this country has so much 
improved in the last quarter of a century, that it 
would not be surprising if Bryant's original poems 
have yielded to his heirs already larger returns 
than they ever yielded their author. 

Bryant, as we have seen, sprang into the world a 
poet full grown. His muse had no adolescence. As 
with Pindar, the bees swarmed in his mouth while 
yet a child. At eighteen he took his place as the 
first poet of the country, but not to realize the too 
common fate of such rare precocity and fall a prey 
to the envy of the gods, as Dryden puts it, who 

11 When their gifts too lavishly are placed 
Soon they repent and w ill not make them last. ' ' 

There is no evidence that Bryant's genius ever 
suffered from prematurity of development. He 



174 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

never wrote a poem from the day that " Thana- 
topsis " appeared until his death that was unwor- 
thy of his best, and the cadences yet linger in the 
air of those impressive lines with which in 1878 he 
commemorated the birthday of the hero of our 
Republic. Was there ever a more meritorious 
poem written by a youth of eighteen than " Than- 
atopsis " ? Was there ever a nobler and more 
Homeric thought more exquisitely set to verse 
than is developed in the three last of the following 
stanzas, written in his eighty-fourth year ? 

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY. 

Pale is the February sky, 
And brief the mid-day's sunny hours; 
The wind-swept forest seems to sigh 
For the sweet time of leaves and flowers. 

Yet has no month a prouder day, 
Not even when the summer broods 
O'er meadows in their fresh array, 
Or autumn tints the glowing woods. 

For this chill season now again 
Brings, in its annual round, the morn 
When, greatest of the sons of men, 
Our glorious Washington was born. 

Lo, where, beneath an icy shield, 
Calmly the mighty Hudson flows ! 
By snow-clad fell and frozen field, 
Broadening, the lordly river goes. 

The wildest storm that sweeps through space, 
And rends the oak with sudden force, 



THE POET, 175 

Can raise no ripple on his face, 
Or slacken his majestic course. 

Thus, 'mid the wreck of thrones, shall live 
Unmarred, undimmed, our hero's fame, 
And years succeeding- years shall give 
Increase of honors to his name. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE TOURIST. 

Bryant's favorite and chief recreation was 
travel, partly because there is no escape from the 
importunate exactions of a daily journal but flight, 
partly because of the happy combination of rest 
and mental fertilization which travel affords. Few 
Americans have been as well equipped to enjoy 
travel as Bryant, and no one could enjoy it much 
more. His familiarity with the languages and 
literature of the countries he visited, his intelli- 
gent curiosity about everything which distin- 
guished his own from other countries and peoples, 
and his love of nature that always grew by what 
it fed on, made him in the largest sense of the 
word a citizen of the world, a stranger nowhere, 
and welcome wherever a welcome was desirable. 
His first excursion that deserved to be dignified 
with the title of a journey was made in 1832 to 
visit his brothers, who upon the death of their 
father had with their mother sought a new home 
in the West, and had become the proprietors of 
a large landed estate in Illinois. He consumed 
two weeks in this journey, which is now made in 
about as many days. While crossing the prairies 



THE TOURIST. 177 

between the Mississippi River and his brothers' 
plantation, he encountered a company of Illinois 
volunteers who were moving south to take a part in 
what is commonly known as the " Black Hawk 
War." They were led by a tall, awkward, un- 
couth lad, whose aj)pearance particularly attracted 
Mr. Bryant's attention, and whose conversation de- 
lighted him by its breeziness and originality. He 
learned many years afterwards, from one who had 
belonged to the troop, that this captain of theirs 
was named Abraham Lincoln. 1 Mr. Bryant little 
dreamed as he scanned the ungainly stripling and 
listened to his unweeded jokes that, some thirty 
years later, it would become his duty to present 
him to a New York audience and his privilege to 
hear from these very lips " the decisive word of 
the contest " which was to result in making this 
captain of volunteers, for eight consecutive years, 
President of the Republic ; the central figure of 
one of the most momentous wars that has ever yet 
been waged among men, and the signer of the proc- 
lamation that delivered over six millions of peo- 
ple from slavery. 

It was during this visit to his brothers that he 
wrote of 

" The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful 
For which the speech of England has no name," 

the closing lines of which, though found in every 
" Reader " used in American schools, never stales, 
1 Godwin's Life of Bryant, i. 283. 



178 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

and will always lend a classic interest to Bryant's 
first trip beyond the Alleghanies. 

1 ' Still this gTeat solitude is quick with life. 
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers 
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, 
And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, 
Are here, and sliding- reptiles of the ground, 
Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer 
Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, 
A more adventurous colonist than man, 
With whom he came across the eastern deep, 
Fills the savannas with his murmurings, 
And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, 
Within the hollow oak. I listen long 
To his domestic hum, and think I hear 
The sound of that advancing multitude 
Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground 
Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice 
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn 
Of Sabbath worshipers. The low of herds 
Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain 
Over the dark brown furrows. All at once 
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream, 
And I am in the wilderness alone." 

In June, 1834, Bryant took passage with his 
family in the sailing ship Poland for Havre, to re- 
ceive his first impressions of the Old World, fie 
spent a few weeks in Paris, a month in Rome, a 
month in Naples, two months in Florence, four 
months in Pisa, three months in Munich, and four 
months in Heidelberg. His studious sojourn at 
this renowned seat of learning w T as interrupted by 
intelligence of the dangerous illness of his editorial 
colleague, William Leggett, who became associated 
with him in the editorship of the " Evening Post " 



THE TOURIST. 179 

very shortly after the death of Coleman. 1 Placing 
his family in charge of friends, — not wishing to 
expose them to the discomforts of a winter's voy- 
age, — he sailed from Havre for New York in 
February, 1836. 

As we never have first impressions of anything 
but once, it is interesting to note some of Bryant's 
first impressions of France. On his journey from 
Havre to Paris, he tells us in one of his letters to 
the " Evening Post : " — 

" We passed females riding on donkeys, the Old 
Testament beast of burden, with panniers on each 
side, as was the custom hundreds of years since. 
We saw ancient dames sitting at their doors with 
distaffs, twisting the thread by twirling the spindle 
between the thumb and finger as they did in the 
days of Homer. A flock of sheep was grazing on 
the side of a hill ; they were attended by a shep- 
herd and a brace of prick-eared dogs, which kept 
them from straying, as was done thousands of 
years ago. Speckled birds w r ere hopping by the 
sides of the road ; it was the magpie, the bird of 
ancient fable. Flocks of what I at first took for 
the crow of our country were stalking in the fields, 
or sailing in the air over the old elms ; it was the 
rook, the bird made as classical by Addison as his 
cousin the raven by the Latin poets. . . . 

1 Leggett was a native of New York, had been a midshipman 
in the navy, and had written some tales and verses which at- 
tracted Mr. Bryant's attention. The wags of the opposition 
called them ' ' The Channting Cherubs.' ' 



180 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

" As we drew nearer to Paris we saw the plant 
which Noah first committed to the earth after the 
deluge — you know what that was, I hope — 
trained on low stakes, and growing thickly and 
luxuriantly on the slopes by the side of the high- 
way. Here, too, was the tree which w r as the sub- 
ject of the first Christian miracle, the fig, its 
branches heavy with the bursting fruit just be- 
ginning to ripen for the market." 

He was in raptures with the Italian atmosphere, 
which surpassed his expectations, but in other re- 
spects he was disappointed with Italian scenery : — 

" The forms of the mountains are wonderfully 
picturesque, and their effect is heightened by the 
rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and 
by the buildings, imposing from their architecture, 
or venerable from time, which crown the emi- 
nences. But if the hand of man has done some- 
thing to embellish this region, it has done more 
to deform it. Not a tree is suffered to retain its 
natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural 
channel. An exterminating war is carried on 
against the natural herbage of the soil. The coun- 
try is without woods and green fields ; and to him 
who views the vale of the Arno ' from the top of 
Fiesole,' or any of the neighboring heights, grand 
as he will allow the circle of the mountains to be 
and magnificent the edifices with which the region 
is adorned, it appears, at any time after midsummer, 
a huge valley of dust, planted with low rows of the 
pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish 



THE TOURIST. 181 

maple on which the vines are trained. The sim- 
plicity of nature, so far as can be done, is de- 
stroyed ; there is no fine sweep of forest, no broad 
expanse of meadow, or pasture ground, no ancient 
and towering trees clustered about the villas, no 
rows of natural shrubbery following the course of 
the brooks and rivers. The streams, which are 
often but the beds of torrents dry during the sum- 
mer, are confined in straight channels by stone 
walls and embankments ; the slopes are broken up 
and disfigured by terraces ; and the trees are kept 
down by constant pruning and lopping, until half 
way up the sides of the Apennines, where the limit 
of cultivation is reached, and thence to the sum- 
mit, is a barren steep of rock, without herbage or 
soil." 

Venice, he found, as many others have done, 
" the most pleasing of the Italian cities." 

At a post house in the Tyrol where he stopped 
on a Saturday his refection was limited to soup 
maigre and fish, " the post-master telling us that 
the priest had positively forbidden meat to be given 
to travelers. Think of that! — that we who had 
eaten wild boar and pheasants at Rome under the 
very nostrils of the Pope himself and his whole 
conclave of cardinals, should be refused a morsel 
of flesh on an ordinary Saturday at a tavern on a 
lonely mountain in the Tyrol by the orders of a 
parish priest." 

In September, 1845, he found an opportunity of 
returning to Europe. After spending about two 



182 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

months In England, he devoted the succeeding 
three months to the principal places of interest in 
France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, 
and Italy, returning to his country and work in 
November. 

In England, Bryant felt the reflex influence of 
his fame as a poet more distinctly than he had felt 
it ten years before on his visit to the Continent. 
This was due in part to the publication in the in- 
terval of the collection of his poems which ap- 
peared in London under the editorial auspices of 
Mr. Irving. Mr. Everett, then our Minister at 
the English Court, called upon him promptly, and 
invited him to meet some of the prominent liter- 
ary men at breakfast. Samuel Rogers, Monck- 
ton Milnes (the late Lord Houghton), and Tom 
Moore were of the number. How Rogers drove 
him home to his lodgings, gave him a general in- 
vitation to his breakfasts, and how they contracted 
before they separated a warm personal regard for 
each other, which only increased with their years, 
has been already told. From Bryant's diary it 
appears that Rogers's house was always open to 
him as a favored guest. Presented to London 
society under such auspices, it is needless to say 
that before he left England he was brought into 
relations with most of the literary celebrities of 
London. He attended Parliament several times, 
went to a Corn Law meeting, at which addresses 
were made by Cobden, Fox, and Bright, where he 
heard some lines cited from his " Hymn to the 



THE TOURIST. 183 

City," which, say the reports of the day, were re- 
ceived with such prolonged applause that he was 
obliged to acknowledge the compliment by rising 
and bowing to the audience. 1 Upon the invitation 
of one of the managers of the British Associa- 
tion he went to Cambridge to attend one of its 
meetings. He here became acquainted with Dr. 
Lyell, Dr. Buckland, Sir John Herschel, Hallam 
the historian ; breakfasted and lunched with Dr. 
Whewell, had his health proposed at a dinner at 
which Professor Sedgwick presided, and at Shef- 
field was taken to see the venerable James Mont- 
gomery, " a light made man, in a huge black silk 
cravat that filled his neck beyond the chin, rather 

1 In his address at the dinner given him by the Free Trade 
League of New York in 1868, Bryant gives the following remi- 
niscence of this meeting : — 

" Mr. President : we must follow up with vigor the advantage 
we have gained, and when the people speak. Congress must and 
shall give way. I remember that, when in the time of the 
famous Corn-Law agitation in England, an agitation for cheap 
bread, — and our agitation is for cheap iron, cheap fuel, and cheap 
clothing, — I heard Cobden, Bright, and Fox discuss the question 
of free trade in corn before an immense assemblage crowded into 
Drury Lane Theatre. Fox insisted that the only method to move 
the British Ministry with Peel at its head was to move the people. 
He quoted the old rhyme — 

" When the wind blows then the mill goes ; 
When the wind drops then the mill stops," 

and he parodied it thus : — 

" When the League blows then the Peel goes, 
When the League stops then the Peel drops." 

" The league followed his advice and blew vigorously, and 
Peel brought in a bill to repeal the restrictions on the trade in 
breadstuffs, and England had cheap bread," 



184 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

thin faced, with a thin, long nose ; his conversa- 
tion agreeable but not striking." At the urgent 
solicitation of Crabb Robinson he drove over to 
call upon Wordsworth, whom he found "in his 
garden in a white broad - brimmed, low -crowned 
hat." The guests walked with him over his 
grounds, took tea at six, and left at ten in the 
evening. 1 

He thought Edinburgh " the finest city he ever 
saw," and Glasgow not without claim to the epi- 
thet " beautiful." What seems to have impressed 
him most in the latter was " the good sense of the 
people in erecting the statues which adorn their 
public squares only to men who have some just 
claim to distinction. Here are no statues, for ex- 
ample, of the profligate Charles II. , or the worth- 
less Duke of York, or the silly Duke of Cambridge, 
as you will see in other cities ; but here the marble 
effigy of Walter Scott looks from a lofty column 
in the principal square, and not far from it is that 
of the inventor Watt ; while the statues erected to 
military men are to those who, like Wellington, 
have acquired a just renown in arms." 

1 "Mr. Bryant often recurred in conversation to his pleasant 
visit to Wordsworth, but one always suspected that, much as he 
reverenced the poet, he was not very strongly impressed by the 
man. Wordsworth had a way of talking of himself and his poe- 
try which must have seemed strange if not ludicrous to one so 
habitually reticent in the same respects as our traveler. . . . Af- 
ter his return, Mr. Bryant sometimes amused his more intimate 
friends with imitations of Wordsworth's reverent manner of re- 
peating his own verses — not, however, in a way that lessened 
respect for the venerable bard." — Godwin's Life, ii. 9. 



THE TOURIST. 185 

He listened on the Sabbath to a sermon from " a 
comfortable-looking professor in some new theolog- 
ical school. It was quite commonplace, though not 
so long as the Scotch ministers are in the habit of 
giving, o . . At the close of the exercises he an- 
nounced that a third service would be held in the 
evening. ' The subject,' he continued, ' will be 
64 The Thoughts and Exercises of Jonah in the 
Whale's Belly." ' " 

At Ayr, he wondered that, " born as Burns 
was in the neighborhood of the sea, which is often 
swelled into prodigious waves by the strong west 
winds that beat on this coast, he should yet have 
taken little, if any, of his poetic imagery from the 
ocean, either in its wilder or its gentler moods. 
But his occupations were among the fields, and his 
thoughts were of those who dwelt among them, and 
his imagination never wandered where his feelings 
went not." He visited the monument to Burns 
erected near the bridge, which he found "an 
ostentatious thing, with a gilt tripod on its sum- 
mit. . . . The wild rose and the woodbine were in 
full bloom in the hedges, and these to me were a 
better memorial of Burns than anything which the 
chisel could furnish." 

In March, 1849, and immediately after the 
memorable schism in the Democratic party which 
resulted in the nomination of Van Buren for 
President by the Free Soil party, the consequent 
defeat of Cass, and the election of Taylor to the 
Presidency, Mr. Bryant visited Cuba by way of 



186 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

the Carolinas and Florida. He spent a week on a 
cotton plantation in South Carolina, another week 
in Florida ; was received by the Governor-General 
at Havana, passed several days on a coffee estate 
at Matanzas, went by rail to San Antonio in a 
car built at Newark, drawn by an engine made in 
New York, and worked by an American engineer ; 
breakfasted at the inn of La Punta on rice and 
fresh eggs and a dish of meat so highly flavored 
with garlic that it was impossible to distinguish the 
species of animal it belonged to. He visited a cock- 
pit in which a man " with a gray beard, a grave 
aspect, and a solemn gait was training a game- 
cock in the virtue of perseverance ; " witnessed a 
cock-fight, a masked ball, a murderer garroted, 
and slavery in some of its most inhuman phases. 
He was absent on this excursion about two months. 
In June, and only a few weeks after his return 
from Cuba, he sailed again on his third trip to 
Europe. After a few days in London he visited 
the Orkney and Shetland Islands, Iona and Staffa. 
In August, he passed over to the Continent, spent a 
few days in Paris, and then proceeded to Switzerland 
and Bavaria, returning to the United States io De- 
cember. During his brief stay in London he was 
again warmly received by Rogers, to whom he was 
specially indebted for an introduction to, and a good 
deal of attention from, the most eminent artists of 
that day in England. At their first meeting on 
this visit Rogers, then over eighty, said to him, 
" You look hearty and cheerful, but our poets all 



THE TOURIST. 187 

seem to be losing their minds. Campbell's son is 
in a madhouse, and if his father had been put 
there during the later years of his life it would 
have been the proper place for him. Bowles 
became weak-minded ; and as for Southey, you 
know what happened to him. Moore was here the 
other day, and I asked him how long he had been 
in town. ' Three or four days,' he said. 4 What, 
three or four days, and not let me know it ! ' ; I 
beg pardon,' said he, putting his hand to his fore- 
head, ; I believe I came to town this morning.' As 
to Wordsworth, a gentleman who saw him lately 
said to me, ' You will not find Wordsworth much 
changed, he still talks rationally.' " 

On returning from the Shetland Islands, which 
he left reluctantly, he called upon Lord Jeffrey, 
"who," he wrote in his diary, " talked eloquently 
of Puseyism, which he said was a fashion, — an 
affectation having no root in any great principle of 
human nature ; appealing neither to mysticism nor 
rationalism, the two great parties of the religious 
world — and which could only be temporary." 
Bryant's impressions of Abbotsford were unsatis- 
factory. u The fellow at the gate was tipsy and 
crusty, and the woman at the house flushed and 
peremptory, not allowing the inside to be seen, 
because the house was shut up." 

Bryant found the Continent bristling with bayo- 
nets, and having all the air of conquered prov- 
inces ; nearly every city worth visiting was "in a 
state of siege." Soldiers filled the streets and all 



188 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

the public squares of Paris. " Those," he wrote, 
"who maintain that France is not fit for liberty 
need not afflict themselves with the idea that there 
is at present more liberty in France than her people 
know how to enjoy." 

He found the cities along the Rhine also crowded 
with soldiers, Heidelberg full of Prussian troops, 
and every other man he met in the streets a soldier ; 
he entered Stuttgart " with a little army." From 
Geiselingen to Ulm, on the Danube, " the road 
was fairly lined with soldiers walking or resting 
by the wayside, or closely packed in the peasants' 
wagons." At Munich, he hoped for better things, 
but in vain. " They were everywhere placed in 
sight as if to keep the people in awe." So weary 
had he become of the perpetual sight of the mili- 
tary uniform and other symbols of repression 
and oppression that when he reached Switzerland, 
where no gens d'armes challenged his movements, 
where no one asked for his passport, nor for the 
keys to his baggage, he " could almost have kneeled 
and kissed the shores of the hospitable republic." 
He returned to his country and duties in December. 

In November, 1852, Bryant sailed again into the 
East, Egypt and Syria being his objective points. 
On his way through London he passed an evening 
at the house of Mr. Chapman, the publisher, where, 
it appears by his diary, he met " a blue-stocking 
lady, who writes for the ' Westminster Review,' 
named Evans." A few days later, he learned that 
this blue-stocking was Miss Marian Evans, since 



THE TOURIST. 189 

celebrated as " George Eliot." He met there 
also Herbert Spencer, Louis Blanc, and Pierre 
Leroux. He arrived in Paris the evening before 
the proclamation of the Empire ; saw the new 
emperor escorted to the palace of the Tuileries, 
and was impressed " by the utter absence not only 
of enthusiasm, but even of the least affectation of 
enthusiasm," in the crowd which surrounded him. 
From Paris he proceeded through Lyons, Mar- 
seilles, and Nimes to Genoa, whence he sailed to 
Naples. After a flying visit to Pompeii, Amalfi, 
Paestum, Nocera, and Malta, he embarked for 
Alexandria, whence without delay he proceeded to 
Cairo, where he spent a week, and thence up the 
Nile as far as the first cataract, in which six- 
teen days were consumed. From Cairo he set out 
across the desert for Jerusalem, where, after fif- 
teen days' camel-riding, he arrived on the 13th of 
February. After bathing in the Jordan and the 
Dead Sea, visiting Nazareth, the Lake of Tiberias, 
Mount Carmel, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Beyrout, Damas- 
cus, and Baalbec, he sailed to Constantinople ; 
thence went to Smyrna, Athens, Corfu, Trieste, 
Venice, Florence, Rome, Civita Vecchia, and Mar- 
seilles. After spending ten or twelve days in Paris, 
and a day or two in London, he returned to New 
York in May, 1853. 

In May, 1857, Mr. Bryant crossed the Atlantic 
for the fifth time, not on this occasion for his 
own pleasure, but for Mrs. Bryant's health, which 
for two or three years had given him more or less 



190 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

solicitude. They landed in Havre on the first of 
June. After a short stay in Paris, they traveled 
through Belgium and Holland to Heidelberg, 
thence through Switzerland, where they did not 
tarry, and France to Bagneres de Luchon. By 
November, they were at Madrid, and in January, 
1858, at Naples. On this journey Mrs. Bryant 
was attacked with a catarrhal fever, which assumed 
so grave a character at Naples as to detain them 
there about four months instead of the one month 
which they had reserved for that city. They left 
in May for Rome, where they passed about a fort- 
night. They returned through Venice in July to 
Paris, where they tarried a couple of weeks, and 
then left for England, returning to the United 
States in August, but unhappily without accom- 
plishing the primary purpose of their expedition. 
"T brought back Mrs. Bryant," he wrote to Dr. 
Dewey, " nearly as well as she was when I carried 
her off to Europe, and gaining strength so steadily 
that I have great hopes of soon seeing her even 
better than she was there." 

It was in the spring of this year, as already 
stated, that Bryant purchased the Bryant home- 
stead at Cummington, mainly to test the effects 
of the Berkshire air upon her still languishing 
health. He built a new house to insure the 
greater advantage to her from the atmospheric ac- 
cessories, and when it was finished in the spring of 
1866 invited all his relations from Illinois to join 
him there in " hanging the pot." The pleasure 



THE TOURIST. 191 

and benefits for which he had so considerately 
planned were not to be realized, Mrs. Bryant's 
health that summer declined so rapidly that early 
in July he was compelled to notify his brothers 
and their families, already assembled at Cumming- 
ton, that his w r ife was too ill to meet them there. 
She survived but a few weeks, and on the 27th she 
was where — to use Bryant's own words : — 

u He who went before thee to prepare 
For his meek followers, shall assign thy place." 

In reply to a letter of condolence from his friend 
Dana, he wrote : — 

" I know, my dear friend, that she is happier 
where she is now than even her generous sym- 
pathies made her here, yet when I think of the suf- 
fering which attended her illness of eleven weeks, 
of the patience with which she compelled herself 
to endure it, and of her strong desire to do God's 
will, I cannot help feeling a sharp pang at the 
heart, notwithstanding that I am able to think of 
her as now beyond the reach of death, pain, and 
decay, with the Divine person whose example of 
love and beneficence she sought to copy with the 
humblest estimate of her success. In this point 
of view my grief may be without cause, but there 
is yet another way to look at it. I lived with my 
wife forty-five years, and now that great blessing 
of my life is withdrawn, and I am like one cast 
out of Paradise and wandering in a strange world. 
I hope yet to see all this in the light of which you 
speak — the light in which ' death duplicates those 



192 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

who are taken from us.' Meantime, I perceive 
this : that the example set me by her whom I have 
lost — of absolute sincerity, of active benevolence, 
and of instant and resolute condemnation of 
whatever is unrighteous and inhuman — is more 
thought of and cherished by me than during her 
lifetime, and seems invested with a new sacred- 
ness." 

Among the papers found upon Bryant's table 
when he left for Mexico was the following sketch 
of an uncompleted poem which can scarcely be 
fully appreciated by any who have not experienced 
a similar bereavement, but which no one can read 
without being moved by its pathetic tenderness. 
Mr. Bryant had then been a widower seven years. 

" The morn hath not the glory that it wore, 
Nor doth the day so beautifully die, 
Since I can call thee to my side no more, 
To gaze upon the sky. 

u For thy dear hand, with each return of Spring, 
I sought in sunny nooks the flowers she gave ; 
I seek them still, and sorrowfully bring 
The choicest to thy grave. 

" Here where I sit alone is sometimes heard, 

From the great world, a whisper of my name, 
Joined, haply, to some kind, commending word, 
By those whose praise is fame. 

"And then, as if I thought thou still wert nigh, 
I turn me, half forgetting thou art dead, 
To read the gentle gladness in thine eye, 
That once I might have read. 



THE TOURIST. 193 

" I turn, but see thee not ; before my eyes 
The image of a hillside mound appears, 
Where all of thee that passed not to the skies 
Was laid with bitter tears. 

" And I, whose thoughts go back to happier days, 
That fled with thee, would gladly now resign 
All that the world can give of fame and praise, 
For one sweet look of thine. 

* ' Thus, ever, when I read of generous deeds, 

Such words as thou didst once delight to hear, 
My heart is wrung with anguish as it bleeds 
To think thou art not near. 

" And now that I can talk no more with thee 
Of ancient friends and days too fair to last, 
A bitterness blends with the memory 
Of all that happy past. 

"Oh, when I — 
"Roslyn, 1873." 

In a brief memoir written immediately after her 
death for the eyes of his daughters alone, Mr. 
Bryant said : — 

" I never wrote a poem that I did not repeat to 
her and take her judgment upon it. I found its 
success with the public precisely in proportion to 
the impression it made upon her. She loved my 
verses and judged them kindly, but did not like 
them all equally well." 1 

The health of his younger daughter, worn by 
watching and anxiety, now required his special at- 
tention, and under the impression that change of 

1 Godwin's Life of Bryant, ii. 246. 



194 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

scene and climate might be advantageous to both, 
they sailed again in a French steamer for Havre, 
in October, 1866. After a fortnight in Paris they 
went to Anielie-les-Bains, in the eastern Pyrenees. 
In January, they left for the south of Spain, and 
in February, they were in Florence. Here Bryant 
was invited by Garibaldi to accompany him to 
Venice, whither he was going to celebrate the 
withdrawal of the Austrians from Italy. No one 
who knew Bryant would need be told that he pre- 
ferred to adhere to his original purpose of taking 
his daughter to Rome, where he arrived in March. 
They were soon driven thence by the heat, and 
were at Dresden in April, having visited on their 
way Ancona, Trieste, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, 
and Nuremberg. They were again in Paris early 
in May, 1867, in England in July, where they re- 
mained until the 24th of August, passing much of 
their time in Wales, and returned to New York 
again in September. This was the sixth and last 
of Mr. Bryant's trips beyond the Atlantic. While 
in Home and later in Florence on this trip, he met 
Hawthorne more or less familiarly. In his "French 
and Italian Note-Books," Hawthorne has given a 
striking sketch of Bryant and the impression the 
poet left upon him. 

"May 22. Yesterday, while we were at dinner, Mr. 
Bryant called. I never saw him but once before, and 
that was at the door of our little red cottage in Lenox, 
he sitting in a wagon with one or two of the Sedgwicks, 
merely exchanging a greeting with me from under the 



THE TOURIST. 195 

brim of his straw hat, and driving on. He presented 
himself now with a long white beard, such as a palmer 
might have worn as the growth of his long pilgrimages ; 
a brow almost entirely bald and what hair he has quite 
hoary ; a forehead impending, yet not massive ; dark, 
bushy eyebrows and keen eyes, without much softness in 
them ; a dark and sallow complexion ; a slender figure, 
bent a little with age, but at once alert and infirm. It 
surprised me to see him so venerable ; for, as poets are 
Apollo's kinsmen, we are inclined to attribute to them 
his enviable quality of never growing old. There was 
a weary look in his face, as if he were tired of seeing 
things and doing things, though with certainly enough 
still to see and do, if need were. My family gathered 
about him, and he conversed with great readiness and 
simplicity about his travels, and whatever other subject 
came up, telling us that he had been abroad five times, 
and was now getting a little homesick, and had no more 
eagerness for sights. . . . 

"His manners and whole aspect are very particularly 
plain, though not affectedly so ; but it seems as if in the 
decline of life, and the security of his position, he had 
put off whatever artificial polish he may have heretofore 
had, and resumed the simple habits and deportment of 
his early New England breeding. Not but what you 
discover, nevertheless, that he is a man of refinement, 
who has seen the world, and is well aware of his own 
place in it. He spoke with great pleasure of his recent 
visit to Spain. I introduced the subject of Kansas, and 
methought his face forthwith assumed something of the 
bitter keenness of the editor of a political newspaper 
while speaking of the triumph of the administration 
over the Free Soil opposition. I inquired whether he 



196 WILLIAM CULL EX BRYANT. 

had seen S ,* and he gave a very sad account of 

him as he appeared at their last meeting, which was in 

Paris. S , he thought, had suffered terribly, and 

would never again be the man he was ; he was getting 
fat ; he talked continually of himself, and of trifles con- 
cerning himself, and seemed to have no interest for 
other matters ; and Mr. Bryant feared that the shock 
upon his nerves had extended to his intellect, and was 

irremediable. He said that S ought to retire from 

public life, but had no friend true enough to tell him 
so. This is about as sad as anything can be. I hate to 

have S undergo the fate of a martyr, because he 

was not naturally of the stuff that martyrs are made of, 
and it is altogether by mistake that he has thrust him- 
self into the position of one. He was merely, though 
with excellent abilities, one of the best of fellows, and 
ought to have lived and died in good fellowship with all 
the world. 

" Bryant was not in the least degree excited about 
this or any other subject. He uttered neither passion 
nor poetry, but excellent good sense, and accurate infor- 
mation, on whatever subject transpired ; a very pleasant 
man to associate with, but rather cold, I should imagine, 
if one should seek to touch his heart with one's own. 
He shook hands kindly all round, but not with any 
warmth of gripe, although the ease of his deportment 
had put us all on sociable terms with him.' , 

Upon the completion of his translation of the 
Homeric poems, Bryant felt the need of such re- 
laxation and diversion as he could not secure at 

1 Charles Sumner, then in Paris under treatment for the 
bruises he had received in the senate chamber from a member of 
Congress named Brooks, of South Carolina. 



THE TOURIST. 197 

home, and decided to seek them in a trip to Mexico. 
Accompanied by his brother John, his younger 
daughter, a niece, and his friend John Durand, he 
sailed on the 25th. of January, 1872, for Nassau, 
where he stopped two weeks, thence to Havana, 
where he spent a week, thence to Vera Cruz, where 
he arrived on the 27th of February, thence by rail 
and stage to the City of Mexico. He remained in 
the capital about a fortnight, and then returned lei- 
surely to the coast, visiting Puebla and Orizaba on 
the way. They returned by way of Havana, and 
reached home again before the end of April. Dur- 
ing his stay in Mexico he was received with very 
conspicuous attention. No foreigner, it was said, 
had ever been received in Mexico with more. Not 
only President Juarez and his cabinet, but the lit- 
erary and scientific notabilities of the country vied 
with each other in heaping honors upon him. 

" To no extrinsic influences," said a Mexican print 
of the day, " can be attributed the honors and hospi- 
tality so lavishly conferred upon him. They were the 
spontaneous outpourings of a grateful people, who never 
forget an act of kindness and justice, and who had not 
forgotten that when Mexico was friendless, Mr. Bryant 
became her friend. They were the responsive echoes 
of the gifted and talented of the land, who appreciated 
his lofty genius ; they were the tokens of the admiration 
of high talents and noble aspirations entertained by our 
society." 

Upon his return from his trip to Europe in 
1850, Bryant was persuaded to collect into a volume 



198 WILL I AM CULLER BRYANT. 

and publish the letters he had sent to his jour- 
nal from time to -time during his several excursions 
into foreign lands and in the remoter parts of his 
own country. He called them " Letters of a Trav- 
eler." In the winter of 1869, he published a sup- 
plementary volume containing the letters written 
subsequently to the first publication. To these he 
gave the title of " Letters from the East." Had 
he written freely of what he saw and heard, these 
letters would have been of rare interest and value, 
for wherever he traveled he saw, if not all, very 
many of the most interesting people. But his no- 
tions of the sanctity of private hospitality were so 
strict that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that 
in all his published letters cannot be found the 
name of a single person from whom he received 
hospitality or whose acquaintance he made in any 
private circle. In his preface to " Letters of a 
Traveler," he says, " The author might have made 
these letters more interesting to readers in general, 
if he had spoken of distinguished men to whose 
society he was admitted ; but the limits within 
which this may be done with propriety and without 
offense are so narrow and so easily overstepped 
that he has preferred to abstain altogether from 
that class of topics." 

It is needless to say that the epistolary echoes 
of a tourist, from which all notice of the people he 
meets are rigorously excluded, could hardly possess 
a very lively interest, whoever might be the writer ; 
and Bryant put a just estimate upon his letters 



THE TOURIST. 199 

when he said that " the highest merit such a work 
can claim, if ever so well executed, is but slight." 
They have a certain value, however, which time 
will add to, more than it will subtract from. They 
are written in faultless English and faultless taste ; 
they show what, in the lands he visited, specially 
attracted his attention ; and they paint many pic- 
tures and disclose many social and political condi- 
tions which, in progress of time, would hardly be 
credited upon less unimpeachable authority. His 
letters from the East are by far the most interest- 
ing, for there he encountered none of the restric- 
tions which impoverished his letters from Europe. 
He was at liberty to speak freely of everything he 
saw and of everything he felt among the Mussul- 
men, and he made of it an exceedingly entertaining 
book. It possesses a consecutiveness of narrative, 
too, which is wanting in the previous collection, 
and was written after he had become more familiar 
with the world and with the manners of many 
men, and when his judgment was fully ripe. But 
all of them have delighted his many personal, 
friends and admirers, in deference to whose wishes 
rather than to his own judgment he put them into 
volumes. It is very possible that they will add 
little, if anything, to his fame as a man of letters, 
but it is certain that they lend proportion and 
dignity to his character as a member of human 
society. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE ORATOR, 

An English critic, writing of Bryant a few 
weeks after his death, said, " He was so accom- 
plished, so graceful, so impressive a speaker, that 
he only just failed to be an orator." This is not a 
criticism to quarrel with, but it is a judgment to 
be accepted with conditions. It can hardly be 
said that any of his discourses which have survived 
him were eloquent in the common acceptation of 
that word, for they lacked the fire and enthusiasm 
which we expect from a speaker inspired by an 
audience ; but had he been accustomed to earn his 
bread by his tongue instead of his pen, had he 
occupied a seat in our halls of legislation, or re- 
mained at the bar, or in a position where the atten- 
tion of large audiences was to be held, it would be 
difficult to name any faculty of heart or mind that 
was lacking to have won for him the reputation of 
an orator, had he courted such a reputation. He 
had an acute sensibility for the choicest forms and 
highest powers of expression ; he had a marvelous 
memory, and was singularly alive to every senti- 
ment that appealed to our higher nature and most 
refined sympathies. His aversion to every form 



THE ORATOR. 201 

of disingenuousness, too, was so uncompromising, 
and his judgments were so considerate and free 
from the delusions of partisanship, that he was al- 
ways sure of a sympathetic and confiding audience. 
What he might have achieved as an orator is now 
largely a matter of conjecture. He left the bar 
before his talents as a public speaker had been 
tested ; he never took a seat in any deliberative 
body ; and the occasions upon which he appeared 
before the public were usually of a more or less 
academic character, where one would have hardly 
looked for the higher flights of eloquence from 
even the most accomplished orator. In any judg- 
ment of Bryant, the fact must never be lost sight 
of that it was his first and chief ambition from 
childhood to be a poet : to the Spirit of Poesy he 
was always so loyal that he would not allow him- 
self to flirt, even, with any other kind of fame. He 
seemed to take no pride in being one of the best 
prose writers of his day, nor of being one of the 
most successful public speakers. It is easy to see 
by what he did, both as a journalist and platform 
speaker, that he might have excelled himself in 
both characters if he had desired to. But he pre- 
ferred that posterity should know him as a poet, 
and was content that all his other work should be 
just good enough not to impair his poetical repute. 1 

1 " I honor Mr. Bryant," says a distinguished contemporary 
poet, tf for his laborious life, and admire him for the determina- 
tion which kept him a poet through it all. The child was father to 
the man, and the man never forgot the child's birthright of song, 



202 WILLIAM CULLEX BRYANT. 

About twenty of Bryant's discourses have been 
preserved. Most of them were delivered after his 
position at the head of American literature was 
secure, and upon occasions when no other person 
could have filled his place. 

His firsfc effort of an oratorical nature in New 
York was at a meeting of the National Academy 
of Design, held in commemoration of Thomas Cole, 
the artist, in the spring of 1848. It is no dispar- 
agement of this performance to say that it would 
be the least missed perhaps of any of his elaborate 
discourses. He had been very intimate with Cole, 

— the divine birthright which revealed him to himself, which 
brightened his brooding youth, sustained him through his strug- 
gling manhood, and consecrated him in his old age. The cham- 
bers of his mind were crowded with guests whom he would not 
have chosen if he had been free to choose, but there was one 
chamber into which they never penetrated, — into which nothing 
common ever penetrated, in that it was the innermost sanctuary 
of his soul. The poems that he wrote in New York and else- 
where were of the same general character as those that he wrote 
at Cummington, the only difference between them being that the 
later ones are riper and more mature than the earlier ones, larger 
in intention and scope, of broader and higher significance, more 
thoughtful and meditative, more serious and dignified, more 
purely poetical and imaginative, — in a single word, of greater 
distinction. What separates them from all other American 
poems is imagination, which was the supreme quality of his 
genius, and which, while it is nowhere absent from his verse, is 
omnipresent in his blank verse, which is the best that has been 
written by any modern poet whatever, — the most sustained, 
the most "impressive, the most unforgettable. No one can read 
' Thanatopsis,' l The Prairies,' 'The Antiquity of Freedom,' 
and ' The Flood of Years ' without feeling that Mr. Bryant was 
a great poet.'' — Richard H. Stoddard, in Lippincotf s Magazine, 
November, 1889. 



THE ORATOR. 203 

was fond of him, and he held in great respect the 
kind of cleverness which, till then, he had not seen 
much of in any one but Cole. It was, however, so 
manifestly inspired by feelings of personal regard 
as to lack something of the judicial impartiality 
which gives so much dignity to his later discourses. 

The death of James Fenimore Cooper furnished 
the next, I might say the first, occasion for his ap- 
pearance as the official interpreter of a national 
emotion. His discourse on this occasion and his 
address on the death of Irving are models of com- 
memorative oratory. With a grateful appreciation 
of everything in the life and work of both that 
entitled them to the gratitude and admiration of 
posterity, there is not a lineament exaggerated nor 
a merit overlooked or overstated, while the criti- 
cism is so discriminating and amiable that the most 
loval friend of either could find nothing in them 
to which they could take exception. Upon the 
deaths of Halleck in 1868 and of Verplanck in 
1870, it was to Bryant that every eye turned as 
the fittest person to say the last word at their 
tombs. 

The charms of these four discourses entitle 
them to a permanent place in our literature, and it 
is safe to say that no judgment that may hereafter 
be passed upon either of these eminent writers, not 
, conforming substantially with that pronounced in 
these discourses, is likely to endure. 

During the later years of his life there was no 
one whose presence was more sought for on public 



204 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

occasions in New York than Mr. Bryant, and lie 
rarely refused these applications unless he could 
offer a satisfactory excuse, though he never encour- 
aged them, and sometimes lost patience at the fre- 
quency and pertinacity with which they were 
pressed upon him. 

All his discourses are conspicuous by a " vir- 
ginal modesty," and the absence of all apparent 
effort to withdraw the interest of his audience from 
the occasion to himself. He never seemed to ask 
or expect fame from his speeches, and yet he never 
made a speech, however unpreparedly, that did not 
by its elevation of thought, or its scholarly allu- 
sions, or its cheerful humor, or its graces of form, 
or some or all these qualities combined, betray 
what Confucius was wont to call " the superior 
man," nor one which does not possess some charm 
sure to beguile the attention of the most indiffer- 
ent reader. 

At the dinner given to the late Professor Morse 
in 1868, he made a brief address in which there 
were passages that would add a leaf to the chaplet 
of any orator, ancient or modern. Speaking of 
Morse's great invention he said : — 

" There is one view of this great invention which 
impresses me with awe. Beside me at this board, 
along with the illustrious man whom we are met to 
honor, and whose name will go down to the latest 
generations of civilized man, sits the gentleman to 
whose clear-sighted perseverance, and to whose 
energy, — an energy which knew no discourage- 



THE ORATOR. 205 

ment, no weariness, no pause, — we owe it that the 
telegraph has been laid which connects the Old 
World with the New through the Atlantic Ocean. 
My imagination goes down to the chambers of the 
middle sea, to those vast depths where repose the 
mystic wire on beds of coral, among forests of 
tangle, or on the bottom of the dim blue gulfs, 
strewn with the bones of whales and sharks, skele- 
tons of drowned men, and ribs and masts of foun- 
dered barks, laden with wedges of gold never to be 
coined, and pipes of the choicest vintages of earth 
never to be tasted. Through these watery soli- 
tudes, among the fountains of the great deep, the 
abode of perpetual silence, never visited by living 
human presence and beyond the sight of human 
eye, there are gliding to and fro, by night and by 
day, in light and in darkness, in calm and in tem- 
pest, currents of human thought borne by the elec- 
tric pulse which obeys the bidding of man. That 
slender wire thrills with the hopes and fears of 
nations ; it vibrates to every emotion that can be 
awakened by any event affecting the welfare of the 
human race. A volume of contemporary history 
passes every hour of the day from one continent to 
the other. An operator on the Continent of Eu- 
rope gently touches the keys of an instrument in 
his quiet room, a message is shot with the swiftness 
of light through the abysses of the sea, and before 
his hand is lifted from the machine the story of re- 
volts and revolutions, of monarchs dethroned and 
new dynasties set up in their place, of battles and 



206 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

conquests and treaties of peace, of great statesmen 
fallen in death, lights of the world gone out and 
new luminaries glimmering on the horizon, is writ- 
ten down in another quiet room on the other side 
of the globe. 

" Mr. President, I see in the circumstances which 
I have enumerated a new proof of the superiority 
of mind to matter, of the independent existence of 
that part of our nature which we call the spirit, 
when it can thus subdue, enslave, and educate the 
subtilest, the most active, and in certain of its 
manifestations the most intractable and terrible, of 
the elements, making it in our hands the vehicle 
of thought, and compelling it to speak every lan- 
guage of the civilized world. I infer the capacity 
of the spirit for a separate state of being, its inde- 
structible essence and its noble destiny, and I 
thank the great discoverer whom we have assem- 
bled to honor for this confirmation of my faith." 

Darwin's theory of the consanguinity of man 
and the lower animals was rarely if ever, in so few 
words, put more effectively on the defensive than 
in Bryant's brief address at a Williams College 
Alumni dinner in 1871. "Admitting," he says, 
" that we are of the same flesh and blood as the 
baboon and the rat, where does he find his proof 
that we are improving instead of degenerating? 
He claims that man is an improved monkey ; how 
does he know that the monkey is not a degenerate 
man, a decayed branch of the human family, fallen 
away from the high rank he once held, and haunted 



£> 



THE ORATOR. 207 

by a dim sentiment of his lost dignity, as we may 
infer from his melancholy aspect ? Improvement, 
Mr. President and gentlemen, implies effort : it is 
up-hill work ; degeneracy is easy : it asks only 
neglect, indolence, inaction. How often do the 
descendants of illustrious men become the most 
stupid of the human race ! How many are there, 
each of whom we may call 

* * c The tenth transmitter of a foolish face ' ! 

— a line of Savage, the best he ever wrote, worth 
all his other verses put together — 6 The tenth 
transmitter of a foolish face ' — and that face 
growing more and more foolish from generation to 
generation. I might instance the Bourbon family, 
lately reigning in Spain and Naples. I might in- 
stance the royal family of Austria. There is a 
whole nation, millions upon millions, — our Chinese 
neighbors, — of whom the better opinion is that 
they have been going backward in civilization from 
century to century. Perhaps they wear the pig- 
tail as an emblem of what they are all coming to 
some thousands of years hence. How, then, can 
Mr. Darwin insist that if we admit the near kin- 
dred of man to the inferior animals we must be- 
lieve that our progress has been upward, and that 
the nobler animals are the progeny of the inferior ? 
Is not the contrary the more probable ? Is it not 
more likely that the more easy downward road has 
been taken, that the lower animals are derived 
from some degenerate branch of the human race, 



208 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

and that, if we do not labor to keep the rank we 
hold, our race may be frittered away into the 
meaner tribes of animals, and finally into animal- 
eulse ? Then may our Tweeds become the progen- 
itors of those skulking thieves of the Western wilds, 
the prairie-wolves, or swim stagnant pools in the 
shape of horse-leeches ; or astute lawyers may be 
represented by foxes, our great architects by colo- 
nies of beavers, our poets by clouds of mosquitoes 
famished and musical ; our doctors of divinity — 
I say it with all respect for the cloth — by swarms 
of the mantis, or praying insect, always in the atti- 
tude of devotion. If we hold to Darwin's theory, 
— as I do not, — how are we to know that the vast 
multitudes of men and women on the earth are not 
the ruins, so to speak, of some nobler species, with 
more elevated and perfect faculties, mental, physi- 
cal, and moral, but now extinct ? 

" Let me say, then, to those who believe in the 
relationship of the animal tribes, that it behooves 
them to avoid the danger which I have pointed 
out by giving a generous support to those institu- 
tions of wholesome learning, like Williams Col- 
lege, designed to hold us back from the threatened 
degeneracy of which there are fearful portents 
abroad — portents of moral degeneracy, at least. 
Let them move before we begin to squeak like 
bats or gibber like apes ; before that mark of the 
brute, the tail, has sprouted, or, at least, while it 
is in the tender germ, the mere bud, giving but 
a faint and indistinct promise of what it may 



THE ORATOR. 209 

become when the owner shall coil its extremity 
around the horizontal branch of a tree and swing 
himself by it from one trunk of the forest to 
another. If any one here be conscious of but a 
friendly leaning to the monkey theory, let him 
contribute liberally to the fund for putting up a 
building where the students of Williams College 
can be cheaply boarded ; if the taint have struck 
deeper, let him found a scholarship ; if he have 
fully embraced the theory, let him, at any sacri- 
fice, found a professorship, and then, although his 
theory may be wrong, his practice in this instance 
will be worthy of universal commendation." 1 

It is not difficult to imagine the effect of the 
following passage in a speech delivered at a mass 
meeting held in 1874 to denounce the issue of 
more irredeemable paper : — 

" Will you hear an anecdote illustrative of this 
topic ? It was some forty years ago that a tall, 
thin gentleman, in a long great-coat and a cap, 
stalked into the Mechanics' Bank in this city. He 
leisurely took from his pocket-book a five-dollar 
note of the bank, and laying it before the teller, 
requested its payment. The teller said, ' We do 
not pay our notes.' The tall, thin man — who it 
appeared was John Randolph — put on his specta- 
cles and read the note in a high-keyed voice. 
6 " The president and directors of the Mechanics' 
Bank promise to pay the bearer five dollars, value 

1 Whether as a specimen of his logic or his humor, is not this 
■worthy of Dr. Franklin at his best ? 



210 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

received." There, I want the five dollars which 
you promise to pay.' c But we do not pay,' re- 
joined the teller ; the banks have suspended pay- 
ment.' ' Oh, stopped payment ! Then let me tell 
you what to do. Take the sledge-hammer out of 
the hand that hangs over your door, and in its 
place put a razor.' My friends, if Congress should 
be moved by this clamor to disgrace the country 
by issuing more notes, the condition of whose ex- 
istence is to be dishonored, may we not take a hint 
from this anecdote ? What business will the king 
of birds — the eagle, whose flight is above that of 
all other fowls of the air — have on an escutcheon 
which this policy will disgrace in the eyes of the 
world ? Let his image then be blotted out ; ob- 
literate also the stars of heaven ; efface the stripes 
of morning light which should be the promise of 
a day of glory and honor, and, instead of those 
emblems, let the limner draw on the broad sheet 
the image of a razor huge enough to be wielded 
by the Giant Despair, — a gentleman with whom, 
if this demand for more paper-money be granted, 
we are destined to scrape a closer acquaintance 
than we have enjoyed yet, — and on the enormous 
blade let the words be inscribed, in staring letters, 
4 Warranted to shave.' " 

I ask indulgence for one more specimen of Bry- 
ant's oratory, taken from a speech made at a din- 
ner given him by the. Free Trade League in New 
York in 1868. 

" Yet there is a certain plausibility in what the 



THE ORATOR. 211 

protectionists say when they talk of home industry, 
and a home market, — a plausibility which misleads 
many worthy and otherwise sensible people, — 
sensible in all other respects, and whom as men I 
admire and honor. There are clever men among 
them who bring to their side of the question a 
great array of facts, many of which, however, have 
no real bearing upon its solution. There is a 
plausibility, too, in the idea that the sun makes a 
daily circuit around the earth, and if there were 
any private interests to be promoted in maintain- 
ing it, we should have thousands believing that 
the earth stands while the sun travels round it. 
4 See for yourself,' they would say. 4 Will you not 
believe the evidence of your own senses ? The 
sun comes up in the east every day before your 
eyes, stands over your head at noon, and goes down 
in the afternoon in the west. Why, you admit the 
fact when you say, " the sun rises," " the sun sets," 
" the sun is up," " the sun is down." What a fool 
was Galileo, what nonsense is the system of Coper- 
nicus, what trash was written by Sir Isaac New- 
ton ! ' 

" I remember a case in point, an anecdote I 
once heard in Scotland. A writer to the signet, 
that is to say an attorney named Moll, who knew 
very little except what related to the drawing up 
of law papers, once heard a lecture on Astronomy 
in which some illustrations were given of the daily 
revolution of the earth on its axis. The attorney 
was perplexed and bewildered by this philosophy 



212 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

which was so new to him, and one day, his 
thoughts frequently recurring to the subject, he 
looked up from his law-papers and said : ' The 
young mon says the warld turns roond. It 's vera 
extraordinar'. I 've lived in this place sax and 
thretty years and that grass-plot preserves the same 
relative poseetion to the house that it had sax and 
thretty years sin', and yet the young mon says the 
warld turns roond. It 's vera extraordinar'.' Here 
was a man who was not to be taken in by this non- 
sense about the earth revolving on its axis, and if 
there were any real or imaginary pecuniary advan- 
tage to be gained by denying it, Mr. Moll would 
have a whole army of his way of thinking, many of 
them far wiser and better informed in other re- 
spects than he." 

Bryant was accustomed to think over and mem- 
orize and not infrequently write out what he wished 
to say, when he had sufficient notice of what was 
expected of him, 1 though his most unpremeditated 

1 His memory once, and for the first time, served him a scurvy 
trick, which depressed him very much. A friend of his who wit- 
nessed it has made the following account of the scene : "It was 
at a public dinner, I think, and during the last decade of his life, 
that he was called upon and expected to speak. He had not pro- 
ceeded far in his discourse when he stopped, obviously having lost 
its thread. He stood a few seconds in silence and then sat down. 
Before another speaker had been called upon, however, he rose 
again and resumed his speech, but alas ! only for a sentence or 
two. He lost the thread again, sat down, and made no farther 
effort to resume. On leaving the hall I joined him, and we 
walked together to his house. As soon as we were alone in the 
street, he said in a tone which showed plainly how much the ut- 
terance cost him, ' I see I must attempt no more public speeches ; 



THE ORATOR. 213 

speeches had merits all their own. I do not recall 
a single one which did not contain something that 
was worthy of preservation. It cannot be said that 
his elocution added much to the effectiveness of his 
discourse. His voice was not rounded and full nor 
very flexible, and therefore lent but little force or 
light and shade to his discourse ; nor did he ever 
wholly overcome a certain monotony of manner 
which made the hearer of the poem read before 
the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in 
1821 1 exclaim, "If Everett had read this poem, 
what a sensation it would have produced ! " His 
modesty and utter self-effacement always more 
than made up with his audience for any lack of 
elocutionary skill. I cannot better conclude what 
I have to say of Bryant as a platform speaker than 
with the following extract from some comments 

my memory never served me such a trick before in all my life.' 
I comforted him as well as I could by saying* that he had been 
too fatigued by the labors of the day, and that I had no doubt 
after suitable rest he would find his memory just as faithful a 
servant and friend as ever. The fact that his memory could tire, 
and like himself was growing old, not merely in years, was a 
revelation to him. Painful as is the spectacle always of a speaker 
betrayed before an audience by his memory, there was one most 
gratifying incident in the case I have described. No power of 
eloquence from Mr. Bryant's lips could have drawn from that 
audience the manifestations of sympathy for him which followed 
the suspension of his speech, and which said as plainly as if ut- 
tered in words, ' No matter about the speech ; nothing you have 
said, nothing you could have said, nothing you have left unsaid, 
could make us love and respect you more or less than we do 
now.' " 

1 The Ages. 



214 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

upon his "Discourses" from the pen of the late 
George Ripley, one of the most learned and judi- 
cious literary critics of his time. 

" He was always the honored guest of the evening, and 
the moment in which he was to be called upon to speak 
was awaited with eager expectation that never ended in 
disappointment. He was singularly happy in seizing 
the tone of the company, no matter what were the cir- 
cumstances or the occasion ; his remarks were not only 
pertinent, but eminently felicitous ; with no pretensions 
to artificial eloquence, he was always impressive, often 
pathetic, and sometimes quietly humorous, with a zest 
and pungency that touched the feelings of the audience 
to the quick. 

" On more important public occasions, when the 
principal speech of the day was assigned to him, he dis- 
charged the trust with a tranquil dignity of manner, a 
serene self-possession, and an amplitude of knowledge 
and illustration that invariably won the admiration of 
the spectators. His last address of this kind, delivered 
on the day of his fatal attack, at the unveiling of the 
bust of Mazzini in Central Park, was a masterpiece of 
descriptive oratory, unsurpassed by any of his previous 
efforts for a similar purpose. Never was there a more 
just or feeling tribute to the Italian patriot. Seldom 
has been presented a more discriminating analysis of a 
great political career, or a finer portraiture of the ad- 
mirable qualities of a noble and heroic personage.' , 



CHAPTER X. 

PUBLIC HONORS. 

Though occupied most of his life in shaping 
the opinions of his country people upon questions 
of public policy, Bryant never held any political 
office or dignity. 1 Under a popular government, 
the representative man is usually as near to the 
average of the popular intelligence and morality 
as the machinery provided for ascertaining public 
opinion permits. Our government's trusts are 
therefore rarely confided, or its honors bestowed, 
upon the comparatively restricted class of " supe- 
rior men," and for the very sufficient reason that 
this class would not fairly represent the wishes of 
the great majority, which it is the proper function 
of popular governments to consult. There are 
none, probably, who would hesitate to admit that 
Bryant's standards, morally and intellectually, were 
too far above the average of his countrymen to 
make him in any political sense a representative 
man. Niagara is not a representative waterfall. 

1 His brief discharge of the duties of Tithing-man, Town 
Clerk, and Justice of the Peace during the moulting season of his 
career as a lawyer at Great Barrington hardly suffices to qualify 
this statement. 



216 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

It is not easy to conceive of any important public 
station in which Bryant would have proved accept- 
able to so large a number as many of his contem- 
poraries, in both those respects his inferiors, would 
have proved, or of any public office which would 
not have gained from him more dignity and con- 
sideration than it could confer. 

Republics in our day and " with all the modern 
improvements " have in this respect no particular 
advantage over any of their predecessors. The 
stream of popular favor never rises higher than 
its fountain, and public honors, like kissing, go as 
much by favor now as when Caesar's barber was 
made a senator, and honored with a gorgeous mon- 
ument for his noisy hostility to Pompey. 1 

Though Bryant never received, nor if offered 
would probably have accepted, any of those honors 
and distinctions which are commonly regarded as 
the only satisfactory reward of the successful poli- 

1 Some Roman wag proposed the following epitaph for the 
tomb of this barber, whose name was Licinus : — 

"Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato parvo, 
Pompeius nullo ; " 

which may be thus Englished : - 

" For Licinus we built a tomb of marble, oh how tall ! 
For Cato but a little one, for great Pompey none at all." 

This epitaph recalls the fact that the commissioners of the New 
York Central Park, in order to prevent the erection of a monu- 
mental statue within its precincts to the notorious Tweed, made 
a rule that no monument should be placed in the Park in honor of 
any one who had not been dead five years, which rule for that 
period, at least, excluded a bust of Bryant which was offered to 
the commissioners, and before that time expired Tweed was in 
the Tombs. 



PUBLIC HONORS. 217 

ticlan, he had no lack of public distinction and 
popular consideration, such, too, as governments 
have not to give. 

Upon his return in 1836 from his first trip to 
Europe, he was invited to accept a public dinner 
by the most eminent literary men in the country, 
Irving, Halleck, Verplanck, and Paulding head- 
ing the list, that " they might express their high 
sense of his literary merits and estimable charac- 
ter," and congratulate him upon his safe return. 

Out of the excess of his modesty Bryant de- 
clined this honor. " I cannot but feel," he said in 
his reply, " that although it might be worthily 
conferred upon one whose literary labors had con- 
tributed to raise the reputation of his country, 1 
I who have passed the period of my absence only 
in observation and study have done nothing to 
merit such a distinction." 

While absent in Europe in 1858, he was elected 
a Regent of the University of the State of New 
York. The mail following that which bore to 
him the intelligence brought me the following let- 
ter : — 

" My dear Sir, — I learn, through the news- 
papers, that I have been elected by the New York 
Legislature a Regent of the University. I will 
not affect to undervalue the favorable opinion of 
so respectable a public body, manifested in so 
spontaneous a manner, without the least solicita- 

1 Obviously alluding to what Irving* had done during his ab- 
sence in Europe, and who did accept a dinner upon his return. 



218 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

tion on the part of my friends, and I beg that this 
letter may be used as an expression of my best 
thanks. 

" There are, however, many motives which make 
it necessary for me to decline the appointment, 
and among these are my absence from the country, 
the inconvenience of combining the duties of the 
place with the pursuits in which I am engaged 
when at home, and my aversion to any form of 
public life now, by my long habit made, I fear, in- 
vincible. I therefore desire by this letter to re- 
turn the appointment to the kind hands which 
have sought to confer it upon me, confident that 
some worthier person will easily be found, who 
will bring the necessary alacrity to the perform- 
ance of its duties. 

" I am, dear sir, very truly yours, 

W. C. Bryant." 

To John Bigelow. 

It was no mean compliment to Bryant's emi- 
nence of character that when Abraham Lincoln 
came to deliver a lecture in New York immedi- 
ately after his famous canvass for the senatorship 
with Senator Douglas in Illinois, that the politi- 
cians stood aside and Bryant was invited to pre- 
side. " It was worth the journey to the East," 
said Mr. Lincoln, " to see such a man." 

It has rarely fallen to the lot of any man of let- 
ters to receive during his lifetime a more grateful 
tribute of affection and respect than was bestowed 
upon Bryant on his seventieth birthday, November 



PUBLIC HONORS. 219 

3, 1864. The Century Club, of which he had been 
one of the founders, resolved to make it the occa- 
sion of a festival in his honor. All the prominent 
men of letters and artists of the country partici- 
pated. Bancroft, then president of the Century, 
greeted Bryant on his arrival with a brief address. 
"Our tribute to you," he said, " is to the poet, but 
we should not have paid it had we not revered you 
as a man. Your blameless life is a continuous 
record of patriotism and integrity; and passing 
untouched through the fiery conflicts that grow 
out of the ambition of others, you have, as all 
agree, preserved a perfect consistency with your- 
self, and an unswerving unselfish fidelity to your 
convictions." 

Bryant's reply was singularly happy and becom- 
ing, the more so as there was nothing more diffi- 
cult for him than to talk about himself. 

" I thank you, Mr. President," he said, " for 
the kind words you have uttered, and I thank this 
good-natured company for having listened to them 
with so many tokens of assent and approbation. 
I must suppose, however, that most of this appro- 
bation was bestowed upon the orator rather than 
upon his subject. He w r ho has brought to the 
writing of our national history a genius equal to 
the vastness of the subject has, of course, more 
than talent enough for humbler tasks. 1 wonder 
not, therefore, that he should be applauded this 
evening for the skill he has shown in embellishing 
a barren topic. 



220 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

" I am congratulated on having completed my 
seventieth year. Is there nothing ambiguous, 
Mr. President, in such a compliment? To be 
congratulated on one's senility! To be congratu- 
lated on having reached that stage of life when 
the bodily and mental powers pass into decline 
and decay ! Lear is made by Shakespeare to say, 

" ' Age is unnecessary ; ' 

and a later poet, Dr. Johnson, has expressed the 
same idea in one of his sonorous lines : — 

" ' Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.' 

You have not forgotten, Mr. President, the old 
Greek saying, — 

1 ' ' Whom the gods love die young, ' — 

nor the passage in Wordsworth : — 

. . . " * Oh, sir, the good die first, 
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
Burn to the socket.' 

" Much has been said of the wisdom of Old Age. 
Old Age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for 
the community. It is wise in declining new enter- 
prises, for it has not the power nor the time to 
execute them ; wise in shrinking from difficulty, 
for it has not the strength to overcome it ; wise in 
avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready 
and swift action, by which dangers are parried and 
converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom 
for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises 
must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties 
surmounted. What a world would this be if it 



PUBLIC HONORS. 221 

were made up of old men ! — generation succeeding 
generation of hoary ancients who had but a dozen 
years or 23erhaps half that time to live ! What 
new work of good would be attempted ? What 
existing* abuse or evil corrected? What strange 
subjects would such a world afford for the pencils 
of our artists — groups of superannuated gray- 
beards basking in the sun through the long days 
of spring, or huddling like sheep in warm corners 
in the winter time ; houses with the timbers drop- 
ping apart ; cities in ruins ; roads unwrought and 
impassable ; weedy gardens and fields with the 
surface feebly scratched to put in a scanty harvest ; 
decrepit old men clambering into crazy wagons, 
perhaps to be run away with, or mounting horses, 
if they mounted them at all, in terror of being 
hurled from their backs like a stone from a sling. 
Well it is that in this world of ours the old men 
are but a very small minority. 

" Ah, Mr. President, if we could but stop this 
rushing tide of time that bears us so swiftly 
onward, and make it flow towards its source ; if we 
could cause the shadow to turn back on the dial- 
plate ! I see before me many excellent friends of 
mine, worthy to live a thousand years, on whose 
countenances years have set their seal, marking 
them with the lines of thought and care, and 
causing their temples to glisten with the frosts of 
life's autumn. If to any one of them could be 
restored his glorious prime, his golden youth, with 
its hyacinthine locks, its smooth, un wrinkled brow, 



222 WILLIAM CULL EN" BEY A NT. 

its fresh and rounded cheek, its pearly and perfect 
teeth, its lustrous eyes, its light and bounding step, 
its frame full of energy, its exulting spirits, its high 
hopes, its generous impulses, and, added to all 
these, the experience and fixed principles of mature 
age, I am sure, Mr. President, that I should start 
at once to my feet, and propose that in commemo- 
ration of such a marvel, and by way of congratu- 
lating our friend who was its subject, we should 
hold such a festivity as the Century has never seen 
nor will ever see again. Eloquence should bring 
its highest tribute, and Art its fairest decorations 
to grace the festival ; the most skillful musicians 
should be here with all manner of instruments of 
music, ancient and modern ; we would have sack- 
but, and trumpet, and shawm, and damsels with 
dulcimers, and a modern band three times as large 
as the one that now plays on that balcony. But 
why dwell on such a vain dream, since it is only by 
passing through the darkness that overhangs the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death that man can reach 
his second youth ? 

" I have read, in descriptions of the Old World, of 
the families of princes and barons coming out of 
their castles to be present at some rustic festivity, 
such as a wedding of one of their peasantry. I am 
reminded of this custom by the presence of many 
literary persons of eminence in these rooms, and I 
thank them for this act of benevolence. Yet I 
miss among them several whom I had washed rather 
than ventured to hope that I should meet on this 



PUBLIC HONORS. 223 

occasion. I miss my old friend Dana, who gave so 
grandly the story of the Buccaneer in his solemn 
verses. I miss Pierpoint, venerable in years, yet 
vigorous in mind and body, and with an undimmed 
fancy ; and him whose pages are wet with the tears 
of maidens who read the story of Evangeline ; and 
the author of ' Fanny and the Croakers,' no less 
renowned for the fiery spirit which animated his 
4 Marco Bozzaris ; ' and him to whose wit we owe the 
' Biglow Papers,' who has made a lowly flower of 
the wayside as classical as the rose of Anacreon ; 
and the Quaker poet, whose verses, Quaker as he 
is, stir the blood like the voice of a trumpet calling 
to battle; and the poetess of Hartford, whose 
beautiful lyrics are in a million hands, and others, 
whose names, were they to occur to me here as in 
my study, I might accompany with the mention of 
some characteristic merit. But here is he whose 
aerial verse has raised the little insect of our fields 
making his murmuring journey from flower to 
flower, the humble-bee, to a dignity equal to that of 
Pindar's eagle ; here is the Autocrat of the Break- 
fast Table — author of that most spirited of naval 
lyrics, beginning with the line : — 

" ' Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ; ' 

here, too, is the poet who told in pathetic verse the 
story o£ Jephtha's daughter ; and here are others, 
worthy compeers of those I have mentioned, yet 
greatly my juniors, in the brightness of whose rising 
fame I am like one who has carried a lantern in 



224 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

the night, and who perceives that its beams are no 
longer visible in the glory which the morning pours 
around him. 

" To them and to all the members of the Century, 
allow me, Mr. President, to offer the wish that they 
may live longer than I have done, in health of body 
and mind, and in the same contentment and serenity 
of spirit which has fallen to my lot. I must not 
overlook the ladies who have deigned to honor 
these rooms with their presence. If I knew where, 
amid, myrtle bowers and flowers that never wither, 
gushed from the ground the Fountain of Perpetual 
Youth so long vainly sought by the first Spanish 
adventurers on the North American continent, I 
would offer to the lips of every one of them a 
beaker of its fresh and sparkling waters, and bid 
them drink unfading bloom. But since that is not 
to be, I will wish what, perhaps, is as well, and 
what some would think better, that the same kind- 
ness of heart which has prompted them to come 
hither to-night may lend a beauty to every action 
of their future lives. And to the Century itself, 
— the dear old Century, — to whose members I owe 
both the honors and the embarrassments of this 
occasion, — to that association, fortunate in having 
possessed two such presidents as the distinguished 
historian who now occupies the chair and the 
eminent and accomplished scholar and admirable 
writer who preceded him, I offer the wish that it 
may endure, not only for the term of years signi- 
fied by its name, — not for one century only, but 



PUBLIC HONORS. 225 

for ten centuries, — so that hereafter, perhaps, its 
members may discuss the question whether its 
name should not be changed to that of the Club of 
a Thousand Years, and that these may be centuries 
of peace and prosperity, from which its members 
may look back to this period of bloody strife, as to 
a frightful dream soon chased away by the beams 
of a glorious morning." 

But the tributes from others, present or absent, 
were naturally the more significant features of the 
occasion. Poems were read by Dr. Holmes, Bay- 
ard Taylor, Boker, Stoddard, T. Buchanan Read, 
Julia Ward Howe. Other poems were read from 
Whittier, Lowell, H. T. Tuckerman, Dr. Allen, 
Rev. H. N. Powers, and several others who were 
unavoidably absent. Letters of congratulation 
were also read from the Danas, Everett, Long- 
fellow, Pierpont, Verplanck, Halleck, Sprague, 
Charles T. Brooks, Miss Sedgwick, Gold win 
Smith, Dr. Walker, Bishop Coxe, and others with 
whose names the public is less familiar. 

Of Dr. Holmes's verses, which were illuminated 
by the earnestness with which they were pro- 
nounced, the following were in his happiest vein : 



* ' How can we praise the verse whose music flows 
With solemn cadence and majestic close, 
Pure as the dew that filters through the rose ? 

" How shall we thank him that in evil days 
He faltered never, — nor for blame nor praise, 
Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays ? 



226 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

" But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, 
So to his youth, his manly years were true, 
All dyed in royal purple through and through ! 

" Marbles forget their message to mankind : 
In his own verse the poet still we find, 
In his own page his memory lives enshrined, 

tl As in their amber sweets the smothered bees, 
As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, 
Lies self -embalmed amidst the mouldering trees.' ' 

Emerson's speech concluded as follows. " Be- 
fore I sit down, let me apply to him a verse ad- 
dressed by Thomas Moore to the poet Crabbe, 
and Moore has written few better : — 

" ' True bard, and simple as the race 
Of heaven-born poets always are, 
When stooping from their starry place 
They 're children near but gods afar.' " 

Of the following lines from a poem of the Rev. 
H. N. Powers, all who are familiar with Bryant's 
poetry will recognize the j>eculiar felicity. 

" Earth's face is dearer for thy gaze, 

The fields that thou hast traveled o'er 
Are fuller blossomed, and the ways 
Of toil more pleasant than before, 

" The April pastures breathe more sweet, 
The brooks in deeper musings glide, 
Old woodlands grander hymns repeat, 
And holier seems the Autumn-tide. 

" The crystal founts and summer rains 
Are haunted now with pictured grace, 
The winds have learned more tender strains 
And greet us with more kind embrace. 



PUBLIC HONORS. 227 

" More meekly pleads each flowret's eye, 
On gentler errands conies the snow, 
And birds write on the evening" sky 
More gTacious lessons as they go. 

4 'The clouds, the stars, the sea, the grave, 
Wide prairie wastes and crowded marts, 
All that is fair, and good, and brave, 
In peaceful homes and gen'rous hearts, 

" Through thee their wondrous meanings tell : 
And as men go to work and pray 
Feeling thy song's persuasive spell 

Love's face seems closer o'er their way." 

The Rev. John Pierpont, who was prevented by 
age and infirmities from coming to the festival, sent 
a letter, from which the following is an extract : — 

" At first I said within my heart 1 7 11 go — 
But second thoughts forbade me to engage, 
At such a time, in such a pilgrimage, 
My health infirm, and my age 

— (For more than half my eightieth year is spent) — - 
Admonish me to stay at home content, 
And worship, like the Sabian, from afar, 
Kissing my hand towards our brightest star." 

Lowell, detained at home by a serious domestic 
affliction, sent some verses — of which it was the 
least of their merits that they paid the tribute of a 
discriminating homage to a senior brother of Par- 
nassus — entitled " On Board the Seventy-Six," 

" Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea. 
Her rudder gone, her main-mast o'er the side ; 
Her scuppers from the waves' clutch staggering free, 
Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide ; 
Sails, shrouds, and spars with hostile cannon torn. 
We lay awaiting morn. 



228 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

" Awaiting- morn, such morn as mocks despair ; 
And she that bore the promise of the world 
Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, 
At random o'er the wildering waters hurled, 
The wreck of battle drifting slow a-lee, 
Not sullener than we. 

" But one there was, the Singer of our crew, 
Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, 
But whose red heart' s-blood no surrender knew ; 
And couchant under brows of massive line, 
The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, 
Watched, charged with lightnings yet. 

11 The voices of the hills did his obey ; 

The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song ; 
He brought our native fields from far away, 
Or set us mid the innumerable throng 
Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm 
Old homesteads' evening psalm. 

" But now he sang of faith to things unseen, 
Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust, 
And words of doughty cheer he spoke between, 
That made all earthly fortune seem as dust, 
Matched with that duty, old as time and new, 
Of being brave and true. 

"We, listening, learned what makes the might of words, ■ 
Manhood to back them, constant as a star ; 
His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, 
And sent our boarders shouting ; shroud and spar 
Heard him and stiffened ; the sails heard and wooed 
The winds with loftier mood. 

" In our dark hour he manned our guns again ; 

Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's store ; 
Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain ; 
And shall we praise ? God's praise was his before ; 
And on our futile laurels he looks down, 
Himself our bravest crown." 



PUBLIC HONORS. 229 

N. P. Willis, in his letter accepting the invita- 
tion of the Century Club, said of Bryant : — 

" His present eminence among all parties, as the un- 
questioned first poet of the country, has been gained by 
him in connection with a career which has its daily 
trials and temptations, — a career which no one but an 
experienced editor of a newspaper would be likely fully 
to appreciate. Let me call the attention of the brother 
poets who are to celebrate his birthday to the un- 
dimmed lustre of the laurels worn so long. . . . *For 
him to have thus set himself the task, and come from it 
as does Bryant, — the acknowledged most independently 
reliable editor, as well as the most irreproachable first 
poet, is an example not given us by the ancients." 

Stoddard's admirable lines were read by Bayard 
Taylor. The spirit of them may be gathered from 
the first seven stanzas. 

"VATES PATRLE." 

November 3, 1 794 — November 3, 18G4. 

There came a woman in the night, 

When winds were whist, and moonlight smiled, 
Where, in his mother's arms who slept, 
There lay a new-horn child. 

She gazed at him with loving looks, 

And while her hand upon his head 
She laid, in blessing and in power, 
In slow, deep words she said : 

" This child is mine. Of all my sons 

Are none like what the lad shall be, — 
Though these are wise, and those are strong, 
And all are dear to me. 



230 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

" Beyond their arts of peace and war 
The gift that unto him belongs, — 
To see my face, to read my thoughts, 
To learn my silent songs. 

" The elder sisters of my race 

Shall taunt no more that I am dumb ; 
Hereafter I shall sing through him, 
In ages yet to come ! ' ' 

She stooped and kissed his baby mouth, 

Whence came a breath of melody, 
As from the closed leaves of a rose 
The murmur of a bee ! 

Thus did she consecrate the child, 

His more than mother from that hour, 
Albeit at first he knew her not, 

Nor guessed his sleeping power. 



Edward Everett wrote a cordial letter, the more 
cordial from the fact that upon questions of public 
policy growing out of the slavery controversy Mr. 
Bryant and he had not been in sympathy. Among 
other things, he said : " The taste, the culture, and 
the patriotism of the country are, on this occasion, 
in full sympathy alike with those who weave and 
with him who wears the laurel wreath. Happy 
the community that has the discernment to appre- 
ciate its gifted sons, — happy the poet, the artist, 
the scholar, who is permitted to enjoy, in this way, 
a foretaste of posthumous commemoration and 
fame ! " 

Boker read some fervent verses, w 7 hich closed 
with the following lines ; — 



PUBLIC HONORS. 231 

' ' I have not a prayer 
That would not clamber up the heavenly air, 
To kneel before the splendor of the Throne, 
If thus another blessing" could be sown 
In the fair garden of your blooming" days, 
Already fragrant with a nation's praise, 
Bright with the wreaths the total world hath given 
And warm with love that 's sanctified by Heaven. " 

To crown the notable features of this memora- 
ble ovation, the most esteemed artists of the coun- 
try, among them Durand, Huntington, Kensett, 
Eastman Johnson, Church, Gilford, Gray, Col- 
man, Lafarge, Leutze, Hennessey, J. G. Brown, 
Bierstadt, McEntee, and Hicks, united in present- 
ing Bryant with a portfolio of pictures from their 
respective easels. The presentation w r as made 
through Huntington, the president of the Acad- 
emy of Design, in reply to whose brief discourse 
Mr. Bryant, among other things, said : — 

" I shall prize this gift, therefore, not only as 
a memorial of the genius of our artists, but also 
as a token of the good will of a class of men for 
whom I cherish a particular regard and esteem." 

It is worthy of being noted here that there was 
no journal of importance in the land that did not 
make the seventieth anniversary of Bryant's birth 
the theme of respectful and more or less eulogistic 
and discriminating comment. 

In the winter of 1867, Bryant retired from the 
presidency of the American Free Trade League, a 
position which he had held from its origin. In 
recognition of the services he had rendered to the 



232 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

cause, not merely as an officer of the League, but 
more especially through the columns of his journal, 
his associates tendered him a public dinner on the 
30th of January, 1868. All the most prominent 
free-traders of the country were present, or rep- 
resented there in some form, to testify their ap- 
preciation of the work he had done for the emanci- 
pation of the industry and commerce of the nation. 
Bryant's address on the occasion, of which we 
have already cited a specimen, 1 was altogether 
admirable. 

In the spring of 1874, Bryant was elected an 
honorary member of the Russian Academy of St. 
Petersburg, where most of his poems had already 
become known through a translation made by 
Professor Katejeneff, himself a member of the 
Academy. 

On reaching his eightieth birthday, there was a 
spontaneous impulse all over the country to cele- 
brate it. It was finally determined to present him 
with an address, to be followed, as soon as it could 
be prepared, by a vase commemorative of his liter- 
ary career. The address, which Mr. Godwin tells 
us was signed by thousands of names, was pre- 
sented to him at his house in Sixteenth Street by 
Jonathan Sturges, one of the most estimable and 
esteemed citizens of New York. 2 In presenting it, 
he said : — 

1 See p. 210. 

2 Mr. Sturges' s useful career was terminated by death the fol- 
lowing week. 



PUBLIC HONORS. 233 

" We have come, dear Mr. Bryant, to congratulate 
you upon reaching the ripe age of eighty years in such 
vigor of health and intellect ; to thank you for all the 
good work that you have done for your country and for 
mankind ; and to give you our best wishes for your hap- 
piness. For more than sixty years you have been an 
author, and from your first publication to your last you 
have given to us and our children the best thought and 
sentiment in the purest language of the English-speak- 
ing race. For more than fifty years you have been a 
journalist, and advocated the duties as well as the rights 
of men, with all the genuine freedom, without any of 
the license, of our age, in an editorial wisdom that has 
been a blessing to our daughters as well as our sons. 
You have been a good citizen and true patriot, ready to 
bear your testimony to the worth of your great literary 
contemporaries, and steadfast from first to last in your 
loyalty to the liberty and order of the nation. You 
have stood up manfully for the justice and humanity 
that are the hope of mankind and the commandment of 
God. We thank you for ourselves, for our children, for 
our country, and for our race, and we commend you to 
the providence and grace of Him who has always been 
with you, and who will be with you to the end. We 
present to you this address of congratulation, with sig- 
natures from all parts of the country, and with the pro- 
posal of a work of commemorative art that shall be 
sculptured with ideas and images from your poems, and 
be full of the grateful remembrances and affections of 
the friends who love you as a friend, and the nation 
that honors you as the patriarch of our literature." 

Mr. Bryant's reply, brief as it was, was very 
impressive. After fitly returning thanks for the 
kind words of the address, he said : — 



234 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

" I have lived long, as it may seem to most 
people, however short the term appears to me when 
I look back upon it. In that period have occurred 
various most important changes, both political and 
social, and on the whole I am rejoiced to say that 
they have, as I think, improved the condition of 
mankind. The people of civilized countries have 
become more enlightened, and enjoy a greater de- 
gree of freedom. They have become especially 
more humane and sympathetic, more disposed to 
alleviate each other's sufferings. This is the age 
of charity. In our day, charity has taken forms 
unknown to former ages, and occupied itself with 
the cure of evils which former generations neg- 
lected. 

" I remember the time when Bonaparte filled 
the post of First Consul in the French Republic, 
for I began early to read the newspapers. I saw 
how that republic grew into an empire ; how that 
empire enlarged itself by successive conquests on 
all sides, and how the mighty mass, collapsing by 
its own weight, fell into fragments. I have seen 
from that time to this, change after change take 
place, and the result of them all, as it seems to me, 
is that the liberties and rights of the humbler 
classes have been more and more regarded, both in 
framing and executing the laws. For the greater 
part of my own eighty years it seemed to me, and 
I think it seemed to all, that the extinction of 
slavery was an event to be accomplished by a re- 
mote posterity. But all this time its end was 



PUBLIC HONORS. 235 

approaching, and suddenly it sank into a bloody 
grave. The union of the Italian principalities un- 
der one head, and the breaking up of that anomaly 
in politics, the possession of political power by a 
priesthood, seemed, during the greater part of the 
fourscore years of which I have spoken, an event 
belonging to a distant and uncertain future, yet 
was it drawing near by steps not apparent to the 
common eyes, and it came in our own day. The 
people of Italy willed it, and the people were 
obeyed. 

" There is yet a time which good men earnestly 
hope and pray for, — the day when the population 
of the civilized world shall prepare for a universal 
peace by disbanding the enormous armies which 
they keep in camps and garrisons, and sending 
their soldiery back to the fields and workshops, 
from which, if the people were wise, their sover- 
eigns never should have withdrawn them. Let us 
hope that this will be one of the next great 
changes. 

" Gentlemen, again I thank you for your kind- 
ness. I have little to be proud of, but when I 
look round upon those whom this occasion has 
brought together, I confess that I am proud of my 
friends." 

The vase was presented in the following June. 
In reply to addresses from Dr. Osgood and from 
Mr. Whitehouse, the artist, Bryant managed with 
singular grace and felicity as usual to keep his 
modesty in the foreground without the least ap- 



236 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

pearance of trying to make a virtue of it. After 
thanking everybody entitled to thanks, and com- 
mending everything entitled to commendation, he 
said : — 

" And now a word concerning the superb vase 
which is before me, the work of artists who are the 
worthy successors of Benvenuto Cellini, and emi- 
nent in their department. It has been greatly ad- 
mired by those who have seen it. I remember to 
have read, I think some half century ago, a defi- 
nition of the term genius, — making it to consist 
in the faculty of accomplishing great results by 
small means, — the power, in short, which an indi- 
vidual has of overcoming difficulties by a forecast 
and vigor not possessed by others, converting ob- 
stacles into instruments of success. This vase I 
may call a product of genius both in the design 
and the execution, for who would suppose that any 
skill of the artist could connect with such a subject 
as he had before him images so happily conceived, 
so full of expression, and so well combining expres- 
sion with grace ? My friends, we authors cultivate 
a short-lived reputation ; one generation of us 
pushes another from the stage. The very language 
in which we write becomes a jargon, and we cease 
to be read ; but a work like this is always beauti- 
ful, always admired. Age has no power over its 
charm. Hereafter some one may say, ' This beau- 
tiful vase was made in honor of a certain Amer- 
ican poet, whose name it bears, but whose writings 
are forgotten. It is remarkable that so much 



PUBLIC HONORS. 237 

pains should have been taken to illustrate the life 
and writings of one whose works are so completely 
unknown at the present day.' Thus, gentlemen 
artists, I shall be indebted to you for causing the 
memory of my name to outlast that of my writ- 
ings." 

This anniversary was celebrated in Chicago 
the same evening by the Chicago Literary Club. 
This occasion derived a special interest from the 
presence of the poet's brothers, Arthur and John 
C. Bryant. The Rev. Dr. Robert Collyer presided ; 
an admirable address was pronounced by the Rev. 
Horatio N. Pow T ers, and the Bryant brothers enter- 
tained the company with many reminiscences of 
the youth of their illustrious brother, from whom 
an amusing letter was also read. After thanking 
the club for the honor they were doing him, " to 
which," he said, " on looking back upon my past 
life, I feel that I have no claim, and am therefore 
the more indebted to their generosity," he contin- 
ued : " I cannot be present, but my good wishes 
will be with the members. I hope that they will 
find the banquet as pleasant, the conversation as 
entertaining, the speeches, if any, as eloquent, and 
the viands as well flavored, as if the members had 
met to celebrate the birthday of some better man. 
Now I think of it, there must have been born on 
the 3d of November a great many excellent per- 
sons, of both sexes, to whose virtuous lives the 
world is under great obligations. Will not my 
friends of the Literary Club pass to the credit of 



238 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

these persons such share of the honors of their fes- 
tival as I am not worthy of, and thus square the 
account?" 

In the winter of 1874-75, Bryant was invited 
with his family by Governor Tilden to visit him 
at the Executive Mansion in Albany. Their ac- 
quaintance had commenced when Tilden, a lad in 
roundabouts, was brought by his father to the of- 
fice of the " Evening Post," in the " heated term " 
of the United States Bank controversy. Young 
Tilden soon after came to live in New York, where 
the acquaintance ripened rapidly into a friendship 
which never terminated. In the later years of his 
life, Bryant often spoke of the impressions left 
upon him by this precocious stripling, whose con- 
siderate manner and conversation made him ap- 
pear but for his size and dress rather the eldest of 
the party. Bryant learned to attach such value to 
his judgment that he rarely took any important 
step, whether in private or professional matters, 
without counseling with him. 

While a guest of the governor, both branches 
of the legislature tendered Bryant a public recep- 
tion, a compliment which had never before been 
paid in this country to a man of letters. Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Dorsheimer, the president of the 
Senate, in presenting him to that body said : — 

" I need not recall to you the career of your guest. 
Every American knows the incidents of that long and 
honorable life. Still less need I impress upon you the 



PUBLIC HONORS. 239 

merits of his writings. You remember the glowing 
words with which in his youth he taught the love of 
nature and the Christian's faith. You have all seen 
him seated among the lengthening shadows of evening, 
and heard him repeat in English as pure as the Eng- 
lish of Addison and Goldsmith Homer's undying song. 

" I know that I utter your heartfelt wishes when I 
express the hope that the blessings which have been so 
abundantly given to him may be continued, and that his 
life may still be spared to the country whose institutions 
he has defended, whose liberties he has widened, and 
whose glories he has increased." 

In acknowledging the courtesy of the Senate, 
of which its president had been the interpreter, 
Bryant said : — - 

" You will pardon me if, on rising to say a few 
words in acknowledgment of the honor conferred 
upon me, I find myself somewhat embarrassed on 
account of the novelty of the occasion. There is a 
little story, a story some two thousand years old, 
recorded originally in Greek, I believe, — for the 
Greeks had their jest-books as well as the English, 
— in which it is related that a man lost his little 
child and made a funeral. A considerable con- 
course came together of his friends and acquaint- 
ances, and as he appeared before them he made an 
apology for the smallness of the infant corpse. 
[Laughter.] I find myself in a similar condition. 
I see before me the representatives of the different 
parts of our great, powerful, and populous State. 
I see men who come from our rich and beautiful 



240 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

valleys, from the grand and picturesque mountain 
regions of the north of the State, from the banks 
of our glorious rivers, from the borders of our im- 
mense lakes, from populous towns and pleasant 
villages ; towns that are the seats of trade and in- 
dustry, cities noisy with the bustle of business and 
commerce, or resounding with the clash of looms, 
or the blows of the ponderous hammers in our 
manufacturing establishments. 

" You come, gentlemen, as representatives of the 
arts, of the wealth and industry of this great 
State. On my part I have nothing to offset 
against this great array, except what you see be- 
fore you, and that is an object certainly dispro- 
portionately small compared with this imposing 
ceremony. 

a I have nothing to say, therefore, except to re- 
turn my thanks for the great honor you have done 
me, and to add my wishes for your future career. 
My wish is that this session may prove honorable 
to yourselves and useful to the community ; that 
it may be closed with credit, and that it may be 
long remembered for the service it has done and 
the benefit it has conferred on the State to which 
you belong." 

Bryant was then presented to the assembly by 
the Speaker, Mr. McGuire, as one who, " as poet, 
journalist, sage, statesman, and man, had written 
his name in ineffaceable letters on the annals of 
his country and in the hearts of his countrymen. " 
To this, Bryant replied : — 



PUBLIC HONORS. 241 

" Gentlemen of the Assembly : I cannot take 
to myself the flattering words which have been 
uttered by the presiding officer of this Assembly. 
It would be the utmost stretch of self-admiration 
to do so. You will allow me, therefore, gentle- 
men, to put a great deal of what has been said so 
well, or a great deal of the honor of the reception, 
to the credit of old age. Old men, my friends, are 
rarities, and rarity, you know, is often an element 
of value. Things that are not useful are some- 
times rated at a high value on account of the cir- 
cumstance that they are rarely to be met with. 
If pebbles were scarce they would not be picked 
up and thrown at dogs, but would be sought after 
and collected by mineralogists, and deposited in 
cabinets to be gazed at with admiration. 

" I therefore find it proper, and no other than 
proper, that I should divide a part of this honor — 
the greater part of this honor — with those of my 
colleagues who are remnants of a generation passed 
away and overlooked in the flood of waters in 
which we must sink and be submerged. I can 
therefore only return my sincere thanks for the 
honor, both in their names and in my own, and 
to add my best wishes that the deliberations of 
this Assembly may ever be conclusions just and 
honest ; that no desire for self-aggrandizement or 
for pecuniary profit may ever taint its reputation ; 
and that the labors performed in this session may 
be hereafter recorded as an honor to you, and to 
the credit of the State which you represent.' ' 



Z42 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

At the conclusion of his remarks, which were 
received with a curious enthusiasm, the Assembly 
adjourned for half an hour, to give the members 
of both houses an opportunity of being personally 
presented to their guest. 

In the following year, Tilden was nominated by 
the Democratic party for the Presidency. It may 
not be inappropriate here to state that when the 
propriety of nominating Mr. Tilden for governor 
was under discussion in 1874, Bryant said to me 
that he hoped Tilden would accept the nomination 
if offered, and if he did, that he should vote for 
him. It was noticeable through the canvass which 
followed that, though the " Evening Post " sup- 
ported the Republican ticket, not a line appeared 
in its columns calculated to depreciate Tilden in 
the estimation of its readers. Whether Bryant 
voted for Tilden or not I never heard, but I pre- 
sume he did, for he with many others of his party 
were opposed to the election of President Grant 
for a third term, and a vote for General Dix, who 
was the Republican candidate for governor, was 
generally regarded as equivalent to an approval of 
the reelection of Grant. 1 

1 The judgment which Bryant formed of Grant, a judgment 
which history is likely to accept, was thus "briefly stated in a let- 
ter to the Rev. Dr. H. N. Powers, dated July 15, 1877 : — 

" I am glad to hear anything good of General Grant, and thank 
you for the anecdote of him given in your letter. His adminis- 
tration was, in modern phraseology, ' a failure.' I am willing to 
give him credit for any instance of good sense in perceiving his 
mistakes and frankness in acknowledging- them, like that related 
in your letter. I was bitterly disappointed in General Grant, yet 



PUBLIC HONORS. 243 

I may also mention here that while Mr. Bryant 
was a guest of Governor Tilden at Alban} 7 , they 
were both present at a large dinner party given to 
the governor on his birthday. Mr. Bryant pro- 
posed Tilden's health, adding that as he had made 
so good a governor, the public probably would not 
be displeased if his present position were to prove 
a stepping-stone to one more elevated. 

By the light of these facts and the great per- 
sonal esteem which I knew Bryant entertained for 
the governor, I felt encouraged to address him the 

following letter : — 

Albany, August 27, 1876. 

My dear Mr. Bryaxt, — It has been one of my 
dreams for several months that your name should head 
the Tilden Electoral Ticket this fall for the Presidency. 
It has not been practicable for me to see you since the 
St. Louis Convention, and I am now obliged to ask the 
governor's secretary, Mr. Newell, to do me the favor 
to convey to you the expression of my sincere hope that 
if named as an elector you will not decline. 

You need not be told how gratifying such a nomi- 
nation would be to Governor Tilden, nor need I reca- 
pitulate to you the many obvious reasons why you should 

I see no reason to doubt his honesty. He had in the beginning of 
his administration, I think, some notions of what he ought to do, 
but they were not very clear, and the people he had about him, 
and who were not chosen as his associate, with the sagacity which 
I expected, contrived to confuse them still farther, and at last he 
gave us an administration with all the faults of the worst which 
had preceded it. But his part in the history of his country is at 
an end, and I suppose that the merits of his military career will 
be hereafter more looked at than the errors of his political ad- 
ministration." 



244 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

desire to oblige his friends, a large proportion of whom 
are your pupils, with the use of your name. 

The course of the " Evening Post," of course, some- 
what disappoints me and others who like me embarked 
in this effort at administrative reform for no mere per- 
sonal ends. To all such it would be an unspeakable 
satisfaction to know that you would not decline to charge 
yourself with the duty of taking their vote to Washing- 
ton and depositing it for the candidates who in their 
judgment represent the best hope of the country. 

Let me pray that if the convention which is to meet on 
Wednesday next should desire, you will not pain your 
friends by refusing them and your country this service. 

I remain as ever, my dear Mr. Bryant, 

Very sincerely yours, John Bigelow. 

To this appeal I received the following disap- 
pointing though not altogether unexpected reply : 
" Cummington, Mass., August 28, 1878. 

" My dear Mr. Bigelow, — Your letter of yes- 
terday which has just been put into my hands was 
an utter surprise to me. There are many reasons 
why I must decline allowing my name to be placed 
on the Tilden Electoral Ticket, some of which you 
will, I think, understand without my referring to 
them. Others relate to the character and composi- 
tion of the two political parties in the field, and to 
the letters of acceptance written by the two candi- 
dates for the Presidency. Such as they are, they 
constrain me with a force which I cannot resist to 
decline acting on the suggestions made in your let- 
ter. It gives me great pain to refuse anything to 
the friends of a man whom I esteem and honor as 



PUBLIC HONORS. 245 

I do Mr. Tilden, whom I know to be so highly ac- 
complished for the most eminent political stations, 
whose opinions of the proper province and objects 
of legislation and government have been formed in 
the same school as my own, and who, so far as he is 
not obstructed by the party to which he belongs, 
will, I am sure, act not only with ability and integ- 
rity, but with wisdom, in any post to which the 
voice of his countrymen may call him. 
" I am, dear sir, 

Faithfully yours, 

W. C. Bryant." 

Hon. John Bigelow. 

Though I was satisfied in my own mind that 
Bryant regarded Tilden as in every respect much 
the fitter of the two candidates for the Presidency, 
I did not underestimate the difficulties which he 
would encounter in publicly associating himself 
with the fortunes of a candidate which the journal 
he was supposed to, but in fact did not then, con- 
trol 1 would be doing its utmost to defeat. When 
I wrote to him, I was not aware that a few days 
before the receipt of my letter the following corre- 
spondence had passed between him and a Republi- 
can friend, which must have made it practically 
impossible for him to entertain my proposal, even 
though, but for such correspondence, he might have 
been not indisposed to embrace it. 

1 The Evening Post had, a few years before, been converted 
into a stock company, of which Bryant owned only half, but not 
a majority, of the shares. 



246 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

New York, August 23, 1876. 
My dear Mr. Bryant, — I notice by the press 
that you still linger at Cummington, where I hope that 
you are enjoying the nature you so well depict, and 
take all the comfort you so well deserve. In a casual 
conversation with Mr. Henderson x a few days since, I 
mentioned the impression that prevailed that he was 
now the editor in fact, as his son-in-law, Sperry, was 
managing editor of the " Post." He said that nothing 
could be more incorrect, that Mr. Bryant was the re- 
sponsible editor, and inspired as he controlled the polit- 
ical course. I suppose this impression, which prevails 
to a considerable extent, arises from the fact of Mr. 
Henderson's supposed controlling influence in the stock 
of the " Post," as well as your known friendship for 
Governor Tilden, for whose election both Mr. Godwin 
and Bigelow are lending their influence. I do not know 
that you care about all this, but there are a good many 
intelligent and independent voters who depend some- 
what on the coming of the ;i Post " to lead them to act 
wisely at the coming election, but they want to know if 
Mr.. Bryant and the kk Post " are still as of yore one and 
the same. Mr. Henderson knows of my writing you 
this letter, saying you would confirm what he said to 
me, which I have quoted to you. 

Faithfully yours, J. C. Derby. 

" Cummington, Mass., August 28, 1876. 

" To J. C. Derby, Esq. 

" Dear Sir, — I do not wonder that many 
thoughtful persons are undecided as to which 

1 Isaac Henderson, a stockholder and the business manager of 
the Evening Post. 



PUBLIC HONORS. 247 

candidate they shall support in the coming elec- 
tion of President. Both parties aim at the same 
ends. Which has the best candidate or which 
party can be most depended upon to adopt and 
enforce the necessary measures are the questions 
which people are asking. If you look only to the 
candidate, Mr. Tilden is the best, the most of a 
statesman, the soundest and most enlarged in 
opinion, and, I think, of the firmest character. If 
you look at the parties by which the candidates 
are brought forward, the Republican party is the 
most to be relied on — although both parties, 
judged by the proceedings of their representatives 
in Congress, are greatly degenerate, and whichever 
of them obtain the ascendancy, those who look for 
a complete radical, thorough reform will be disap- 
pointed. Some changes will doubtless be made 
for the better, but those who expect all abuses in 
the administration of the government to be done 
away will find their mistake. As to the hard 
money question, it seems to me that it is safest 
with the Republicans. The Democratic party of 
the West is deeply infected with the inflation 
heresy. It is now smothered temporarily, but as 
soon as the election is over it will break out again 
with violence. The Republican party is most free 
from its influence. As to the civil service reform, 
wdiich both parties profess to desire, Mr. Tilden 
has not pledged himself to abstain from the vi- 
cious practice of turning out indiscriminately all 
whom he shall find in office in case he is elected. 



248 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

He only promises to look carefully into their char- 
acters and qualifications. I infer that all whom 
he finds in office must go out. Who will answer 
for him that all whom he appoints will be worthy 
of their places ? Thousands and tens of thousands 
will flock to Washington for these places, all of 
them good ' Democrats,' and it will be absolutely 
astonishing if a large number of those who are 
appointed do not turn out to be rogues. Hayes, 
who only promises to send adrift the unworthy, 
will have an easier task, and leisure to exercise a 
just discrimination. As to the revenue laws, which 
are without doubt one cause of the hard times, 
neither Mr. Tilden nor Mr. Hayes has spoken of 
any reform to be made. Perhaps the chance of 
an enlightened revision of these laws is best in 
case the Democrats obtain the ascendancy, but how 
slight the prospect of such a revision is I leave to 
be inferred from the late proceedings of the Demo- 
cratic House of Representatives. You see, there- 
fore, that when we come to compare the prospect 
of reform under one of the two parties with that 
under the otner, a man who is slow in forming 
conclusions might be forgiven for hesitating. Yet 
the greater number of those dissatisfied Republi- 
cans who came to the Fifth Avenue Conference, 
including most of the wisest heads among them, 
have acquiesced in the nomination of Hayes. The 
Cincinnati Convention did not give them all they 
wanted, but came so near to it that they thought 
it the wisest course to be content, and not to sepa- 



PUBLIC HONORS. 249 

rate from the party with which they had hitherto 
acted. I thought the same thing in regard to the 
6 Evening Post,' namely, that it would not be 
well to detach itself from the party which had car- 
ried the country through the civil war until it was 
forced to do so by the signs of a hopeless degen- 
eracy. There may have been some things in the 
6 Evening Post ' which I have not agreed with al- 
together, being at so great a distance from it that 
I could not be expected to influence it in every- 
thing, but, in the main, it has treated Mr. Tilden 
with marked respect. 

Yours truly, W. C. Bryant/' 

A friend of Tiklen's to whom the last letter was 
shown called Bryant's attention to the fact that 
the most conspicuous, and the only conspicuous, 
case of civil service reform which had been wit- 
nessed in the whole country up to that time had 
occurred under Tiklen's administration, and right 
under his eyes at Albany ; that his Secretary of 
State had selected as Superintendent of the Census 
a Republican, 1 upon the advice of the Hon. Fran- 
cis A.- Walker, Superintendent of the Federal 
Censuses of 1870 and 1880, also a Republican ; 
that all his clerks, at one time over eighty in num- 
ber, were selected by a competitive examination in 
which this Republican superintendent was the sole 
arbiter, and that three fourths at least of all the 
clerks consisted of Republicans. 

1 The late C. W. Seaton, who was afterwards associated with 
Francis A. Walker in digesting- the census of 1880, and subse- 
quently succeeded him as superintendent. 



250 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

It was subsequent to, and doubtless in conse- 
quence of, this information that Bryant supple- 
mented his first letter to Derby with the follow- 
ing:— 

" Cummington, Mass., September 4, 1876. 

" Dear Mr. Derby, — I did not write my pre- 
vious letter for publication, and beg that you will 
not let the press get hold of it. I have a fear that 
I may have done injustice to Mr. Tilden in regard 
to the reformation of the civil service. If so, his 
letter of acceptance was the cause. I looked it 
over for some condemnation of the bad practice, 
so long followed, of turning out of office all the 
men of the beaten party after an election. I found 
no such condemnation, and inferred that he meant 
to leave himself at liberty to follow the practice. 
I have since learned that he had in many instances 
appointed men of the Republican party to office in 
his gift, solely on account of their competency and 
character. This was nobly done, but he will have 
great difficulty in resisting the pressure which 
will be brought to bear upon him, in order to force 
him to make a clean sweep of the public offices 
and fill them with men of his own party. I am 
willing, however, to take this as a proof of Mr. 
Tilden's present disposition, and hope that it will 
not be overcome by the force which will assuredly 
be brought against it. 

Yours very truly, W. C. Bryant." 

Mr. Godwin tells us " Mr. Bryant voted at the 
election in November, but how he voted no one was 



PUBLIC HONORS. 251 

ever able to learn. Members of each of the lead- 
ing parties claimed his name, but when himself 
questioned on the subject, he smiled, and said that 
the ballot was a secret institution." 

Mr. Godwin is correct in stating that Bryant 
voted at the election in November, but not quite 
correct in implying that he voted for either Presi- 
dential candidate. He did not vote the Electoral 
ticket at all. If I had not this assurance upon 
perfectly competent authority, I think it could be 
fairly inferred from the situation. Had Bryant 
voted for Hayes, the candidate of his party, there 
would have been no occasion to make a mystery of 
it. Neither would he ever have been guilty of any- 
thing so much like duplicity as to vote secretly for 
Tilden, while before the world in his paper he was 
understood to be recommending Hayes to the sup- 
port of his readers. Had he voted for Tilden, the 
readers of the " Evening Post," at least, were cer- 
tain to be the first to be taken into his confidence. 
He preferred Tilden to Hayes as a President, but 
the Republican to the Democratic as a party. 

Only a few days after the election, he wrote to a 
lady in Scotland : — 

" This is Evacuation Day, the day when in the 
Revolutionary War we saw the last of the red- 
coated soldiery. But we celebrate it no longer; we 
have other things to think of now 7 : we have chosen 
a President, and are trying to find out who it is. 
We shall be gainers at any rate. Let who will be 
awarded the Presidency, his administration is sure 



252 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

to be better than the present one. I have never 
before felt so little interest in a contest for the 
Presidency. Both parties profess to have the same 
ends in view ; both have put up able and well-in- 
tentioned men for candidates. Tilden is the abler 
and the more thoroughly a statesman, and I think 
the more persistent of the two in any course he has 
marked out for himself ; but his party has suffered 
in character by the late rebellion, which forced 
many of the best people to join the Republican 
party." 

In November, 1877, the Goethe Club gave Bryant 
a reception, at which the Rev. W. R. Alger deliv- 
ered an elaborate address. On closing, he said : — 

u And now, Mr. Bryant, we thank you for consenting 
to allow us this pleasant opportunity for greeting and 
meeting you, and expressing something of our feeling 
towards you. May the guardian fellowship of God sur- 
round you and crown you with every gracious gift until 
the end." 

The length of the addresses which were made at 
and about him were a little embarrassing to Mr. 
Bryant, who was made by the force of circum- 
stances an assenting party to a sort of conspiracy 
to praise him ; but he disengaged his responsibil- 
ity and modesty together by some felicitous banter 
about old age, behind which he was fond of tak- 
ing refuge, and which proved in the later years of 
his life an inexhaustible fountain of amusement 



PUBLIC HONORS. 253 

as well as of excuses. After thanking Mr. Al^er 
and Dr. Ruppaner, the president of the Club, for 
the compliments they had paid him, but which he 
insisted that he could not accept as his due, he 
went on : — 

" You will therefore allow me to ascribe the 
kindness which has been shown me this evening to 
a cause which you will admit to be sufficiently ob- 
vious, namely, to the long life which I have led, 
— the late old age which I have reached, — an ex- 
istence prolonged considerably beyond the common 
lot. One who has passed rather inoffensively be- 
j r ond the milestones which mark the stages of life 
up to fourscore is looked upon by the rest of man- 
kind with a certain compassionate feeling. He 
cannot do much more mischief, they naturally and 
justly think, and therefore may safely be praised. 
His further stay upon the earth is necessarily short, 
and it is therefore a charitable thing to make that 
short stay pleasant. Beside, he has become, by rea- 
son of his very few coevals, a sort of curiosity, — a 
rare instance, — and rarity often gives value and 
price to things which are in themselves intrinsically 
worthless. 

" Let me pursue this thought a little further. 
There have been various attempts to give a concise 
definition of the term ' man,' founded on some pe- 
culiarity which distinguishes the human race from 
all other animals, our fellow-inhabitants, of this 
planet. Some have defined man as a talking animal, 
notwithstanding the instance of the parrot, a bird 



254 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

which sometimes talks as well as certain members 
of Congress ; some as a laughing animal, although 
there is a laughing hyena ; and some as a cooking 
animal, the only animal that roasts chestnuts, 
overlooking the ancient tradition of the monkey 
who used the paws of the cat to draw the nuts from 
the fire. I will venture to give another definition, 
to which, I think, no objection can well be made. 
I would define man as the animal that delights in 
antiquities. No other creature gathers up the rel- 
ics of past years and deposits them in museums 
and guards them with care and points them out to 
the wonder of others. It is only man who digs 
among the ruins of cities destroyed long ago, in 
order to unearth the domestic implements and per- 
sonal adornments of the human race when it was 
yet in its infancy, as Schliemann and others are 
doing, thinking themselves fortunate in proportion 
to the rudeness and clumsiness, in other words the 
antiquity, of these objects. If we were to hear of 
monkeys turning up the earth among old tombs in 
search of the earrings and necklaces of those who 
lived in the time of the Trojan war, we should be 
struck with amazement, and word would at once be 
sent to Darwin by his disciples that here was a 
new proof of the doctrine of evolution. 

" But older than Priam and Agamemnon are the 
remains of the lake dwellers of a distant period of 
the world's history, when men lived in habitations 
built on floats over the water, and used only im- 
plements of stone, the use of metals not being yet 



PUBLIC HONORS. 255 

discovered. Stone axes and stone spear-heads have 
been fished np from the mud of these waters, the 
tokens of a time when warriors hammered each 
other to death with rude weapons of flint and 
granite. These have been diligently collected and 
daintily handled and laid up in cabinets of curios- 
ities, and gazed at and wondered at and made 
the subject of books and elaborate treatises, and 
lighter magazine articles. All their value consists 
in the many years which have elapsed since they 
were shaped by the workmen of a rude and simple 
age. 

" Offer one of these stone axes to a woodman to 
be used in his vocation, and he would reject it with 
scorn. He might by great efforts bruise down a 
tree with it, but he could not be said to cut it 
down. Offer it to a butcher that he may use it in 
felling an ox, and he would laugh at the clumsy 
implement, and demand an axe of metal. Rejected 
as it would be for lack of utility in ministering to 
our necessities or our comforts, it is yet made 
much of ; it is written about and talked about, and 
men see in it a whole chapter of the history of 
mankind. 

" I have thus shown how natural it is that those 
who are left to grow very old become by that cir- 
cumstance alone the objects of kind attention. For 
such testimonials of this kindness as I have re- 
ceived this evening I return, along with my ac- 
knowledgments, my good wishes also. May you 
all who hear me yet become antiquities, not after 



256 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

the fashion of the stone axes which I have de- 
scribed, but after the manner of the pole star, 
which, century after century, has guided by its use- 
ful light the navigator on the sea and the wanderer 
on the land. May you become antiquities like the 
venerable mountains, which attract the clouds and 
gather the rains into springs and rivulets, and send 
them down to give life and refreshment to the 
fields below. May you become antiquities like the 
blessed and ancient sun, which ripens the harvests 
of the earth for successive generations of mankind, 
and at the end of every day leaves in the western 
sky a glorious memory of his genial brightness." 

It is hardly necessary to say that this address 
was followed with great applause, the greater for 
the skill with which Bryant saved his personal dig- 
nity without the slightest sacrifice of his imper- 
turbable good nature. 

It is not only on these exceptional occasions to 
which we have referred that the evidences of re- 
spect, admiration, and reverence for Bryant as a 
poet, as a journalist, and as a man are to be 
sought ; they welled up more or less profusely 
from every fountain of public opinion throughout 
the country. He was an honorary member of 
pretty much every Historical, Philosophical, Anti- 
quarian, and Statistical society ; of every Academy 
of Artists and Men of Letters, and of every col- 
lege society in the United States of sufficient con- 
sideration to feel at liberty to proffer the compli- 
ment. 



PUBLIC HONORS. 257 

The homage that is paid to a public man who 
has offices and honors to bestow, whose smile con- 
fers credit and influence, and whose frown may 
threaten disaster, is always more or less tainted 
with the suspicion that it is to the functionary and 
not to the man it is paid. So the homage that is 
paid to the dead is often much more liberal than 
to the living, from the fact that the object of it is 
no longer in any one's way, and praising him inter- 
feres with no one's advancement, and affords an 
eligible opportunity of earning a reputation for 
magnanimity at a trifling cost. 

When it is considered that Bryant never held 
any public office, that he never controlled any pat- 
ronage, that he was not accustomed to borrow from 
occasions any factitious influence, it must, I think, 
be conceded that the respect and reverence with 
which he inspired his countrymen, and the hom- 
age which they so freely and abundantly accorded 
to him during his lifetime, are among the things 
in their history which do them infinite honor, and 
which testify most faithfully to their correct ap- 
preciation of what is good and great in human 
character. 



CHAPTER XL 

PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 

One of Milton's contemporaries tells us " that 
the poet's vein never happily flowed but from the 
autumnal equinox to the vernal ; and that what- 
ever he attempted at other times was never to his 
satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so 
much." 

What is here said of Milton might be said in a 
way, with more or less propriety, of most eminent 
writers, but not of Bryant. As has been already 
observed in these pages, he was not a man of 
moods and tenses. He never seemed one day less 
ready than another for any kind of intellectual 
exertion. Till years began to tell upon his 
nervous energy, which was not until very late in 
life, he seemed always ready to do his best of any 
kind of work. This is so rare a quality that it 
can only be explained by the pains he took for the 
conservation of his health and the religious con- 
trol which he maintained over all his appetites. 
Like St. Paul, he treated his body as God's tem- 
ple, and, to an almost inconceivable extent, re- 
sisted every inclination tending to unfit it for its 
holy office. He was born with a very delicate con- 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 259 

stitution. One who was a student in Dr. Bryant's 
office tells ns, — 

"The poet was puny and very delicate, and of a 
painfully delicate nervous temperament. There seemed 
little promise that he would survive the casualties of 
early childhood. In after years, when he had become 
famous, those who had been medical students w r ith his 
father when he was struggling for existence with the 
odds very much against him delighted to tell of the 
cold baths they were ordered to give the infant poet in 
a spring near the house early mornings of the summer 
months, continuing the treatment, in spite of the out- 
cries and protestations of their patient, so late into the 
autumn as sometimes to break the ice that skimmed the 
surface." 1 

Shortly after he settled as a lawyer at Great 
Barrington, he represented himself to a correspond- 
ent as " wasted to a shadow by a complaint of the 
lungs." This weakness of the chest, to which both 
his father and sister had succumbed, led him soon 
after his arrival in New York to discontinue the 
use of tea, coffee, spices, and all stimulating condi- 
ments ; to eat sparingly of meat, and to take a great 
deal of bodily exercise. 

It is easy to persuade ourselves that he was 
largely indebted for his ability to contend success- 
fully with morbid hereditary tendencies, and for 
his extraordinary vigor and longevity, to the atten- 
tion he was thus compelled to give to the care of 
his health in early life. It is an extraordinary fact 

1 Dawes's Centennial Address at Cummington, June 26, 1879. 



260 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

that, starting life with such a limited capital of 
health, he lived to be an octogenarian without ever 
having been confined to his bed from illness, except 
his last, within the recollection of any of his off- 
spring, and with all his bodily senses in apparently 
unimpaired perfection. He never used spectacles, 
and his hearing to the last seemed perfect. 

Bryant has happily left us a brief account of his 
sanitary discipline in a letter to an acquaintance 
who had asked of him the secret of his uninter- 
rupted health. If the value of his example as set 
forth in this letter to Joseph H. Richards, Esq., 
could be properly impressed upon the youth of our 
country, it would probably prevent far more dis- 
ease than all the medical schools of the land will 
ever supply the skill to cure. 

"New York, March mh. 

... "I rise early, at this time of the year 
about half past five ; in summer, half an hour or 
even an hour earlier. Immediately, with very little 
encumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exer- 
cises, for the most part designed to expand the 
chest, and at the same time call into action all the 
muscles and articulations of the body. These are 
performed with dumb - bells, — the very lightest, 
covered with flannel, — with a pole, a horizontal 
bar, and a light chair swung round my head. 
After a full hour, and sometimes more, passed in 
this manner, I bathe from head to foot. When at 
my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my 
exercises in the chamber, and, going out, occupy 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 261 

myself in some work which requires brisk mo- 
tion. After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, 
I sit down to my studies till I am called. My 
breakfast is a simple one — hominy and milk, or, 
in place of hominy, brown bread, or oatmeal, or 
wheaten grits, and, in the season, baked sweet 
apples. Buckwheat cakes I do not decline, nor any 
other article of vegetable food, but animal food I 
never take at breakfast. Tea and coffee I never 
touch at any time ; sometimes I take a cup of 
chocolate, which has no narcotic effect, and agrees 
with me very well. At breakfast I often take 
fruit, either in its natural state or freshly stewed. 

"After breakfast I occupy myself for a while 
with my studies ; and when in town, I walk down 
to the office of the ' Evening Post,' nearly three 
miles distant, and after about three hours return, 
always walking, whatever be the weather or the 
state of the streets. In the country I am engaged 
in my literary tasks till a feeling of weariness 
drives me out into the open air, and I go upon my 
farm or into the garden and prune the fruit trees, 
or perform some other work about them which they 
need, and then go back to my books. I do not 
often drive out, preferring to walk. In the coun- 
try I dine early, and it is only at that meal that I 
take either meat or fish, and of these but a mod- 
erate quantity, making my dinner mostly of vege- 
tables. At the meal which is called tea I take 
only a little bread and butter with fruit, if it be on 
the table. In town, where I dine later, I make 



262 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

but two meals a day. Fruit makes a considerable 
part of my diet, and I eat it at almost any hour of 
the day without inconvenience. My drink is water, 
yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a glass of 
wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding 
myself rather confused than exhilarated by w r ine. 
I never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with 
its use. 

" That I may rise early I, of course, go to bed 
early: in town as early as ten; in the country 
somewhat earlier. For many years I have avoided 
in the evening every kind of literary occupation 
which tasks the faculties, such as composition, even 
to the writing of letters, for the reason that it 
excites the nervous system and prevents sound 
sleep. My brother told me not long since that he 
had seen in a Chicago newspaper, and several 
other Western journals, a paragraph in which it 
was said that I am in the habit of taking quinine 
as a stimulant, that I have depended on the excite- 
ment it produces in writing my verses, and that in 
consequence of using it in that way I have become 
as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, you know 
that to be false ; and the rest of the story is 
equally so. I abominate drugs and narcotics, and 
have always carefully avoided anything which spurs 
nature to exertions which it would not otherwise 
make. Even with my food I do not take the usual 
condiments, such as pepper and the like." 

To the habits of life outlined in this letter, 
Bryant faithfully adhered to the end of his days. 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 263 

Not many weeks before his death, and when re- 
covering from a slight indisposition which he had 
been describing to me (he was then approaching 
his eighty-fourth year), I said, " I presume you 
have reduced your allowance of morning gymnas- 
tics." " Not the width of your thumb nail," was 
his prompt reply. " What," said I, " do you man- 
age still ' to put in ' your hour and a half every 
morning?" " Yes," he replied, " and sometimes 
more ; frequently more." This I have always re- 
garded as a signal triumph of character. As the 
glaciers testify to the incalculable power of the sun 
which piles them up on the peaks of the loftiest 
mountains, so this resolute and conscientious pros- 
ecution of a toil which directly furthered no per- 
sonal or worldly end, which added nothing of value 
to his stock of knowledge, which gratified neither 
his own nor any other person's vanity or ambition, 
which deprived him of no trifling proportion of 
the best working hours of his day, testified with 
unimpeachable authority to the heroic moral forces 
of which his will, his tastes, his ambition, were 
always the patient and faithful servants. 

Soon after his settlement in New York, his at- 
tention was directed to the Hahnemannian theory 
of medical science, which had just been introduced 
into the United States by Dr. Hans B. Gram, and 
which he finally accepted as the system of cure 
having most pretensions to a scientific character. 
When later a society of homoeopathic physicians 



264 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

was organized, he was elected its first president. 
In a letter written to his old friend, the Rev. Dr. 
Dewey, in January, 1842, he recapitulates the sub- 
jects then occupying most of public attention, and 
among them' he enumerates homoeopathy, which he 
says " is carrying all before it. Conversions are 
making every day. Within a twelvemonth the 
number of persons who employ homoeopathic physi- 
cians has doubled. A homoeopathic society has 
been established, and I have delivered an inaugural 
lecture before it, — a defense of the system which 
I am to repeat next week. The heathen rage ter- 
ribly, but their rage availeth nothing." Bryant's 
faith in this system of medication grew with his 
years ; and he became quite expert in its applica- 
tion to the ordinary ailments of his family and de- 
pendents. His lecture did much to commend 
homoeopathy to the public confidence, though his 
extraordinary vigor of body and mind was more 
convincing to most persons than anything he could 
write or preach. 

It is a curious coincidence that his death was 
the result not of disease but of a fall, and that the 
only alarm he ever experienced about his health, 
after he embraced homoeopathy, was also in conse- 
quence of a fall. As he was going to his office 
one morning, — he was then in his eightieth year, 
— he slipped on the street and fell. To this acci- 
dent he makes the following playful allusion in a 
letter to Miss C. Gibson, one of his very few 
regular correspondents : — 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 265 

" I am sorry to hear that your health does not 
improve as a consequence of your rambles and 
sojourns on the continent. Will it never be so 
ordered that health, like some diseases, will be- 
come contagious ? What a blessing it would be 
for some of us if a good constitution were catch- 
ing, like the small-pox ! if freedom from pain, and 
gayety of spirits, and the due and harmonious ac- 
tion of all our physical organs, could be given off 
from one to another, by a kind of infection ! But, 
if that were the case, the bad as well as the good 
would have the advantage of it, and derive from 
it strength for their guilty purposes, so that, on the 
whole, the present arrangement need not be dis- 
turbed. . . . My own health, concerning which 
you expressed so kind a concern, is very good 
again. Only my lame shoulder reminds me now 
and then, and not very importunately by neuralgic 
twinges and shootings of pain, of the unlucky bruise 
which it had from my fall on Broadway. It al- 
ways seems to me that there is a kind of disgrace 
in falling to the ground. Drunken people fall. 
As I got up, I thought to myself, ' Nobody, at 
least, is here who knows me.' At that very mo- 
ment a gentleman, whom I did not know, asked : 
fc Are you hurt, Mr. Bryant ? ' 4 Of course not,' I 
answered, and I marched off down town as if I had 
just come from my door." 

During his visit to Europe in 1857, he left his 
place in charge of Mr. George B. Cline, the teacher 



266 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

of the public school in Roslyn, whose personal 
merits and professional accomplishments had won 
his respect and confidence. Not long after his re- 
turn, his worldly affairs now warranting the ex- 
pense, he engaged Mr. Cline to give him his whole 
time, and to discharge all the duties commonly con- 
fided to the steward of an English estate. He was 
eminently fortunate in this arrangement, which re- 
lieved him from all involuntary care of his country 
properties, while insuring a skillful as well as 
faithful execution of his wishes in their manage- 
ment. In whatever quarter of the world he might 
be, Bryant never seemed to lose sight of his landed 
properties, nor to become indifferent to the details 
of their management, of which a voluminous corre- 
spondence with Mr. Cline still bears testimony. 
From Heidelberg, in 1857, he writes : — 
" There is scarcely anything you could tell me 
about Cedarmere [the name of his place at Ros- 
lyn] that I should not be glad to know. When 
a time arrives in which there is less to do than 
usual, I should like to have the alders cut away 
about the pond, particularly on the east side 
where they are beginning to form thickets. In 
cold weather, also, when the thing is practicable, I 
should like to have some loads of sand brought 
from Mott's bank — it being understood that he 
is to be paid for it — and the swampy hollow un- 
der the Jargonelle pear-tree south of the garden 
filled up with it." 

From Paris, he writes : — 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 267 

" In regard to the trees on the hill and those 
near the boat-house which did not put forth leaves 
this spring, I should be glad if you could ascertain 
by any marks upon them to what varieties of fruit 
they belonged, that you could replace them. If 
they were pears, the best way would be to plant 
others in their place this fall as soon as the leaves 
begin to drop. If they were cherry or plum trees, 
the best time, according to my experience, is to 
plant them early in the spring, and to mulch the 
ground about their roots, that they may not suffer 
by the hot dry weather of the ensuing summer. . . . 
In addition to what I have already said concern- 
ing the things I wish to have done on the farm, I 
have at present only to §ay that I should like a 
small crop of wheat put in this fall, that I may 
have something to eat when I return." 

From Madrid, he writes : — 

" I should like the business of the farm to be so 
planned that there would be some leisure left for 
certain jobs, such as keeping the fences in neat 
repair, ditching, draining a little, patching up a 
thousand things that always want looking to, and 
working in the garden. . . . For the next year, 
beginning with April, I wish you to make such 
arrangements in regard to the workmen employed 
on the place as you may think most judicious, and 
in regard to the cows kept on it, to do just as you 
would if the farm belonged to you." 

From Cadiz, he writes : — 

M I wish you to write Mr. Dawes [who super- 



268 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

vised the place at Cummington] that in getting 
blackberry bushes for you in the spring, I wish him 
to take them from the edge of the wood west of 
the new orchard, beginning at the northwest cor- 
ner, and proceeding about a third of the w r ay. The 
berries for that distance are all of the best kind ; 
beyond and nearer the school-house they are infe- 
rior. There is a shrub of the white azalea at the 
corner of the road leading from my place in Cum- 
mington to Mr. Norton's, which I wish dug up and 
transferred this spring to the garden or some other 
suitable place. 

" I wish also rows of trees to be planted on each 
side of the road leading up to Mr. Ellis's place. 
It might be well that some of them should be 
evergreens. 

" Mr. Dawes show r ed me in Worthington where 
a man who has many evergreens on his place had 
successfully planted large ones to the north of 
his house, screening it from view. I suggested 
that he should be employed to plant some large 
ones near my house, to be paid liberally for those 
that live, and those only. Will you see if any- 
thing of this can be done? Please press this 
matter. You know I cannot wait for trees to 
grow." 

From Barcelona, he writes : — 

" I have just been to the market here and bought 
four oranges for two cents." 

From Nice, he writes : — 

" I wish you would supply the place of the Eu- 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 269 

ropean chestnut-tree that died near the summer- 
house, and plant another pine near Captain Post's 
— the one there is sickly." 

From Malaga, he writes : — 

"I am glad to hear so good an account as you 
give of your Sunday-school. Both in that and your 
district school you are engaged in a great work of 
good, which I hope you will not desert without ma- 
ture consideration. As to inconveniences and dis- 
agreeable things, there is no situation in life free 
from them — every condition and occupation hav- 
ing its peculiar troubles, which we must learn to 
bear and make as light as we can. . . . Julia says 
she would like you to set out a clematis on the east 
side of the door, not the wild, strong-growing clema- 
tis of our country which is too luxuriant, and would 
predominate over the honeysuckle. If convenient, 
she would like the Clematis flamula. There was 
one planted in that spot and it must have died. If 
this should be inconvenient take any climbing plant 
from the garden. . . . We are here in Malaga, the 
country of fine fruits and of the best raisins, and 
cannot get a grape, though in the seaports to the 
north we found both that and other fruits most 
abundant and cheap." 

From Marseilles, he writes : — 

" Should your mother go to the West this winter, 
Mrs, Bryant desires that you would get her at our 
expense, for the journey, a good warm cloak or dress 
and a warm bonnet, and give them to her from Mrs. 
Bryant. ... As for eggs and chickens, my wife 



270 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

says they are yours for the present, — use what 
you have occasion for, only leaving a stock of hens 
for us when we come back, — not too many, for 
they are a nuisance." 

From Rome, he writes : — 

" There is [at Cummington] a patch of low 
land or lamb kill, a little to the north of the brook 
running through it, which I wish Mr. Dawes would 
extirpate. The Bates's lost a sheep last sum- 
mer, and I think from eating it. There is also a 
shrub of white azalea in the middle of the road at 
the corner between my farm and the new purchase, 
which I wish to have dug up and transplanted to 
the garden. You know that it is among the most 
fragrant of flowers. ... I would like a row of 
evergreens — hemlocks, I think the best, — planted 
north of the new school-house in Cummington so as 
to shelter it from the winter wind. ... In send- 
ing trees and shrubs to Cummington you will not 
forget Kohlenterias, which flourish so well about 
our place, and of which so many have appeared un- 
der the large tree. The monthly honeysuckle also 
would, I am pretty sure, do well there, and the 
trumpet honeysuckle also, and it would be well to 
add some of the hardier roses." 

From Dresden, he writes : — 

" I do not know whether I suggested that you 
should plant in my plot of ground in the cemetery 
some of those white violets that grow about the little 
waterfall that comes out of the pond south of the 
mill. I think they will do well there. They seem 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 271 

to like a spot partially shaded where the grass is 
not so thick and the earth a little broken." 

From London, he writes : — 

" You say that Mrs. Cline has been sewing some 
sheets together to catch curculios under the plum- 
trees. I was in hopes that the mixture of sawdust 
and petroleum under the trees would save this 
trouble, if spread copiously and wide enough 
around them. I cannot see how a curculio could 
well live to get back into the tree after falling 
among it. At all events, I wish a certain number 
of trees to be left to that remedy alone, that w r e 
may see how it works." 

From Cruff, Perthshire, Scotland, he writes: — 

" Do not forget the Canada thistles in the field 
south of Captain Post's. ... If you w r ere here 
you would miss many things you have in Roslyn. 
Garden vegetables are dear and scarce, and some 
are not to be had. The tomato can be raised only 
under glass. Yet the winter climate is such that 
the Portugal laurel flourishes and many other ever- 
greens too tender to bear the cold on Long Island. 
The cinnamon rose is just coming into bloom. I 
see no apple nor pear trees, which abound in the 
southern counties of the island; indeed, a fruit 
tree of any sort is an unwonted sight here. Yes- 
terday in going through the grounds of a large 
landed proprietor I found a walk of an eighth of a 
mile between plantations of rhododendrons in full 
flower. The jonquil grows wild here, and is just 
passing out of bloom." 



272 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

From Cummington, he writes : — 

" The rainy weather has given place to bright 
and beautiful days. I went to church on Sunday 
at the east village, and heard a sermon so much 
poorer than the previous one at the west village, 
that I think of going back to the west village next 
Sunday." 

From the office of the " Evening Post," he 
writes : — 

" I forgot to say to you that I hoped you would 
see that the pears do not decay in the front room 
and the library. . . . You will give, of course, the 
usual presents to the men. Please get a black al- 
paca dress for Mrs. Tilfor if she needs it. ... I 
send you an advertisement relating to the Japanese 
flower, the Lilium auratum, which is sold cheap. 
Mr. Nordhoff suggests that if you care to have 
any of the bulbs, you had better see him before 
getting them." 

From Mount Savage, he writes : — 

" I think it will be well to make two or three 
barrels of cider, but I do not wish to have it made 
of apples which are half rotten or in any way un- 
sound. I want it made of picked, selected apples, 
and put in barrels which are perfectly sweet. It 
will probably be well to attend to this before I re- 
turn." 

From Cummington, he writes : — 

" The pears came last evening, Friday, in a 
pouring rain, the sixth rainy day that we have had 
in succession. The earth is as full of moisture as 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 273 

a sponge just dipped in water, and is letting it out 
everywhere. As to the pears, they came in very 
good order. A few of the Tysons and the Otts 
were spoiled, and but a few ; they were all except 
the spoiled ones ready for eating. . Both the Otts 
and the Dearborns are much better than those you 
sent before, and the Cedarmeres which we have 
left can hardly be eaten after the excellent pears 
which we got last evening. I think of coming for 
the plums with my brother next Tuesday." 

When in town, his correspondence was, of course 
more frequent, but wherever he was, whether at 
home, or in Europe or Asia or Africa or Spanish 
America, he never seemed to lose sight of nor inter- 
est in whatever nature or art were doing or could be 
persuaded to do at Roslyn and Cummington. He 
was a good farmer and an accomplished botanist. 
There was nothing that drew its life from the soil 
which was not to him a divine expression of pro- 
found and fascinating mysteries, which he was 
always desiring to penetrate ; much of his poetry 
shows with what success. 

Bryant was about five feet ten inches in height, 
very erect, lithe, and well formed. He never be- 
came fleshy, but to the last retained the elasticity 
and alertness which in the lower animals are to- 
kens of high breeding and careful training. He 
was among his school-fellows noted for his beauty, 
and in his old age his appearance was very distin- 
guished. A finer looking head than his at eighty 



274 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

was only to be seen in art galleries. Whoever saw 
him in his later years would discern a new force 
and fitness in those lines of Dr. Donne : — 

" No spring nor summer beauty has sucli gTace 
As I have seen in an autumnal face." 

The austerity of his life, for he never cultivated 
any artificial appetites, contributed to keep him 
comparatively lean in flesh. Hence his endurance 
even at eighty was remarkable. There were few 
young men who cared to follow him in his tramps, 
or who could scale a mountain w T ith less physical 
inconvenience. He was not fond of riding, and 
was rarely seen in a carriage for recreation. I 
never knew of his riding a horse. Walking was 
his favorite out-of-door exercise. He was a great 
favorite with ladies and with children, and had 
the rare art of entertaining them without seem- 
ing to descend for the purpose. He never in- 
dulged in chaff or persiflage, nor in jokes at others' 
expense. The severest punishment he visited upon 
any one whose society was not congenial, and that 
was severe enough, was to let him do all the talk- 
ing and to see as little of him as possible. 

Bryant had been brought up in the Presbyterian 
faith and to regard Calvin as its profound est ex- 
positor. " Calvinism " was practically the religion 
of all New England, where there was any religion 
at all, at the beginning of this century. While 
Dr. Bryant was a member of the General Court, 
Buckminster and Channing were enthralling vast 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 275 

audiences in Boston, both by their eloquence and 
by a theology which seemed to a certain class 
of minds more consistent with the deductions of 
human reason. A Unitarian professor was also 
appointed at Harvard University. Dr. Bryant 
listened to the preachers of these new doctrines, 
subscribed to their publications, and brought the 
doctrines of the new school back to his family, 
where they found a ready acceptance. 

When he came to New York to live, Bryant fre- 
quented the church of Dr. Follen, less because of 
his varied intellectual resources, which were ex- 
ceptional, than because of the freedom he found 
there for the expansion of the religious life in all 
directions. Dr. Follen was called a Unitarian. 
Bryant continued until his death, when in town, 
to attend the churches of this denomination, under 
the successive pastorates of Dewey, Osgood, and 
Bellows. At Roslyn, he attended the Presbyterian 
church, of which Dr. Ely was pastor. Of this 
church he was a trustee, a constant attendant, and 
one of the largest contributors to its maintenance. 
Though habitually an attendant upon the ministra- 
tions of the Unitarian clergy when they were ac- 
cessible, no one ever recognized more completely 
nor more devoutly the divinity of Christ. To a 
little volume from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Alden, 
entitled " Thoughts on the Religious Life," he con- 
tributed a preface, in which he says : — 

"I cannot but lament the tendency of the time, 
encouraged by some in the zealous prosecution of 



276 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

science, to turn its attention from the teachings of 
the gospel, from the beautiful example of Christ's 
life, and the supremely excellent precepts which 
He gave to his disciples, and the people who re- 
sorted to hear Him. To those teachings and that 
example the world owes its recovery from the 
abominations of heathenism. The very men who 
in the pride of their investigations into the secrets 
of the material world turn a look of scorn upon 
the Christian system of belief are not aware how 
much of the peace and order of society, how much 
of the happiness of their households and the pu- 
rity of those who are dearest to them, are owing to 
the influence of that religion extending beyond 
their sphere. There is no character in the whole 
range of qualities which distinguish men from 
each other so fitted to engage our admiration and 
so pregnant with salutary influence on society as 
that which is formed on the Christian pattern by 
the precepts of the gospel, and a zealous imitation 
of the example of the Great Master. 
• «•••••••• 

" This character, of which Christ was the perfect 
model, is in itself so attractive, so 'altogether 
lovely,' that I cannot describe in language the ad- 
miration with which I regard it ; nor can I express 
the gratitude I feel for the dispensation which be- 
stowed that example on mankind, for the truths 
which He taught, and the sufferings He endured 
for our sakes. I tremble to think what the world 
would be without Him. Take away the blessing 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS, 277 

of the advent of his life and the blessings pur- 
chased by his death, in what an abyss of guilt 
would man have been left ? It would seem to be 
blotting the sun out of the heavens — to leave our 
system of worlds in chaos, frost, and darkness. 

" In my view of the life, the teachings, the la- 
bors, and the sufferings of the blessed Jesus, there 
can be no admiration too profound, no love of 
which the human heart is capable too w T arm, no 
gratitude too earnest and deep, of which He is 
justly the object. It is with sorrow that my love 
for Him is so cold, and my gratitude so inadequate. 
It is with sorrow that I see any attempt to put 
aside his teachings as a delusion, to turn men's 
eyes from his example, to meet with doubt and 
denial the story of his life. 

" For my part, if I thought that the religion of 
skepticism were to gather strength and prevail 
and become the dominant view of mankind, I 
should despair of the fate of mankind in the years 
that are yet to come. . . . 

" The religious man finds in his relations to his 
Maker a support to his virtue which others cannot 
have. He acts always with a consciousness that 
he is immediately under the eyes of a Being who 
looks into his heart and sees his inmost thoughts, 
and discerns the motives which he is half unwilling 
to acknowledge even to himself. He feels that he 
is under the inspection of a Being who is only 
pleased w 7 ith right motives and purity of intention, 
and who is displeased with whatever is otherwise. 



278 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

He feels that the approbation of that Being is in- 
finitely more to be valued than the applause of all 
mankind, and his displeasure more to be feared 
and more to be avoided than any disgrace which 
he might sustain from his brethren of mankind." 

I will here allow myself the liberty of quoting 
a few paragraphs from a letter of Miss Bryant 
which exhibits some of the aspects of her father's 
domestic life of peculiar interest. After inviting 
my attention to Dr. Alden's book, she says : — 

" This preface must have been one of the last things 
written by my father. It speaks more fully than I 
have known him to do elsewhere of his religious belief 
and of his belief in Christ, and is very touching, I think. 
I remember how earnestly he used to enjoin upon me 
to study the character and example of Christ and to try 
to follow it. He was so reserved even with his children 
in speaking of such subjects that he rarely admonished 
any one in this way, but when he did it was done with 
a simplicity and earnestness that made it something 
never to be forgotten. 

" My father and mother with Dr. Ely took an active 
part in procuring for the village the cemetery at Roslyn, 
where they both now are buried, and since Dr. Ely's 
death my father was always liberal in subscribing to- 
ward the salary of the clergyman sent there. He com- 
muned there because Dr. Ely was a liberal man, and 
always invited all members of other churches and de- 
nominations who might be present to join in the com- 
munion service. Every Sunday my father and I pre- 
pared flowers which we took to my mother's grave to 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 279 

lay upon it, and upon those of the Godwin children. 
When I was out at Roslyn, my father and Mr. Cline 
went together ; and also, on the day of my mother's 
death, the 26th of July, the graves were covered with 
flowers. My father was much interested in picking the 
flowers himself, and nothing ever interfered with this 
task of love. 

u On Sunday mornings he always read prayers and a 
chapter from the Bible, using Tyndal's translation al- 
ways when at Roslyn, and Furness's Prayers generally, 
sometimes Sadler's. In the evenings, in town, after my 
father had left the parlor, I would sometimes go up 
to his library, and almost always find him reading the 
book of prayers or some other religious book. He never 
spoke of it, but I think it was his invariable custom to 
read in his room some pages of books of this kind be- 
fore retiring. Every Sunday morning, from the time I 
can remember, we had morning prayers, and I suppose 
it was only on Sundays, because in earlier years my 
father was obliged to leave home on week days before 
the family could be assembled for prayers ; and when 
we were in the country he passed most of the week in 
town. Dr. Bellows remarked upon the regularity of 
his attendance at morning and evening church ; he 
scarcely ever failed. On Sunday evenings if anything 
prevented his going to church, and generally in the 
country where we had no church, he read a sermon 
aloud, one of Dr. Dewey's or South's, or formerly one 
of Beecher's (but of late years he did not read his to 
the family circle), sometimes Phillips Brooks's or James 
Freeman Clarke's, or Robertson's, for whose works and 
life he had great admiration. Very few people knew 
how much my father's time was occupied with religious 



280 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

matters, especially during the last years of his life, and 
after my mother's death he read more books of that 
character than any other. He wrote a preface to a 
book of devotional poems collected by Miss J. Dewey, 
and published after his death. Miss Dewey was one of 
the persons to whom my father talked most freely on 
religious matters, although he was very reserved about 
his feelings and sentiments." 

Bryant used to say that a gentleman should 
never talk of his love affairs or of his religion. 
There was no subject, however, as Miss Bryant 
states, that, during many of the later years of his 
life, occupied so large a share of his thoughts as 
religion itself ; none about which he seemed more 
inclined to listen ; but of his own spiritual expe- 
riences he was singularly reticent. I do not re- 
member to have heard of his defining his creed 
upon any of the differentiating questions of the- 
ology, or of avowing a single dogma ; neither do I 
believe such an utterance can be found in any of his 
writings. The preface to Dr. Alden's little book 
already cited approaches nearest to an exception. 

The catholic, un sectarian character of Bryant's 
religion, his profound conviction of the presence 
of God wherever He is made welcome, doubtless 
had its influence in delaying till quite late in life 
his connection with " the visible church." What, 
if any, change in his opinions occurred, or what 
special motive led him to take this step when he 
did rather than at any earlier period of his life, 
has never transpired. It was at Naples in 1858, 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 281 

and in the sixty-fourth year of his age, that he first 
determined to make a formal public profession of 
the Christian faith and " unite with the church." 
of this event, we have the fullest, indeed the only 
original, account from the Rev. Mr. Waterston, of 
Boston. 

" Mrs. Bryant," he tells us, " had been suddenly pros- 
trated by serious illness, and he had watched over her 
through many anxious weeks. ... At this time [April 
23d] I received from him a note stating that there 
was a subject of interest upon which he would like to 
converse with me. On the following day, the weather 
being delightful, we walked in the Villa Reale, the royal 
park or garden overlooking the Bay of Naples. Never 
can I forget the beautiful spirit that breathed through 
every word he uttered, the reverent love, the confid- 
ing trust, the aspiring hope, the rooted faith. Every 
thought, every view was generous and comprehensive. 
Anxiously watching, as he had been doing, in that twi- 
light boundary between this world and another, over 
one more precious to him than life itself, the divine 
truths and promises had come home to his mind with 
new power. He said that he had never united himself 
with the church, which with his present feelings he 
would most gladly do. He then asked if it would be 
agreeable to me to come to his room on the morrow 
and administer the Communion, adding that, as he had 
not been baptized, he desired that ordinance at the same 
time. The day following was the Sabbath, and a most 
heavenly day. In fulfillment of his wishes, in his own 
quiet room, a company of seven persons celebrated to- 
gether the Lord's Supper. With hymns, selections 



282 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

from the Scripture, and devotional exercises, we went 
back in thought to the ' large upper room ' where Christ 
first instituted the Holy Supper in the midst of his dis- 
ciples. Previous to the breaking of bread William Cul- 
len Bryant was baptized. With snow-white head and 
flowing beard, he stood like one of the ancient Prophets, 
and perhaps never since the days of the Apostles has a 
truer disciple professed allegiance to the Divine Mas- 
ter. . . . After the service, while standing at the win- 
dow looking out with Mr. Bryant over the bay, smooth as 
glass (the same water over which the Apostle Paul sailed, 
in the ship from Alexandria, when he brought Christian- 
ity into Italy), the graceful outline of the Island of 
Capri relieved against the sky, with that glorious scene 
reposing before us, Mr. Bryant repeated the lines of 
John Leyden, the Oriental scholar and poet, — lines 
which, he said, had always been special favorites of his, 
and of which he was often reminded by that holy tran- 
quillity which seems, as with conscious recognition, to 
characterize the Lord's Day. 

" ' With silent awe, I hail the sacred morn, 

That scarcely wakes while all the fields are still ; 

A soothing* calm on every breeze is borne, 

A graver murmur echoes from the hill, 

And softer sings the linnet from the thorn. 

Hail, light serene ! Hail, sacred Sabbath morn ! ' " 

It was under the spell of the emotions wdiich 
guided him to the " large upper room " on this 
occasion that Bryant penned the following lines, 
which reveal more of his " inner life " than any 
outside of his household ever learned probably 
from his lips. 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 283 

THE CLOUD ON THE WAY. 

<{ See before us, in our journey, broods a mist upon the ground ; 
Thither leads the path we walk in, blending with that gloomy 

bound. 
Never eye hath pierced its shadows to the mystery they screen ; 
Those who once have passed within it never mors on earth are 

seen. 
Now it seems to stoop beside us, now at seeming distance lowers, 
Leaving banks that tempt us onward with summer green and 

flowers. 
Yet it blots the way forever; there our journey ends at last ; 
Into that dark cloud we enter, and are gathered to the past. 
Thou who, in this flinty pathway, leading through a stranger 

land, 
Passest down the rocky valley, walking with me hand in hand, 
Which of us shall be the soonest folded to that dim unknown ? 
Which shall leave the other walking in this flinty path alone ? 
Even now I see thee shudder, and thy cheek is white with fear, 
And thou clingest to my side as comes that darkness sweeping 

near. 
4 Here, ' thou sayst, ' the path is rugged, sown with thorns that 

wound the feet. 
But the sheltered glens are lovely, and the rivulet's song is 

sweet ; 
Roses breathe from tangled thickets ; lilies bend from ledges 

brown ; 
Pleasantly between the pelting showers the sunshine gushes 

down ; 
Dear are those who walk beside us, they whose looks and voices 

make 
All this rugged region cheerful, till I love it for their sake. 
Far be yet the hour that takes me where that chilly shadow lies, 
From the things I know and love and from the sight of loving 

eyes ! ' 
So thou murmurest, fearful one ; but see, we tread a rougher 

way ; 
Fainter glow the gleams of sunshine that upon the dark rocks 

play > 

Rude winds strew the faded flowers upon the crags o'er which we 
pass ; 



284 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

Banks of verdure when we reach them hiss with tufts of withered 
grass. 

One by one we miss the voices which we loved so well to hear ; 

One by one the kindly faces in that shadow disappear. 

Yet upon the mist before us fix thine eyes with closer view ; 

See beneath its sullen skirts, the rosy morning' glimmers through. 

One whose feet the thorns have wounded passed that barrier and 
came back, 

With a glory on his footsteps lighting yet the dreary track. 

Boldly enter where He entered, all that seems but darkness here 

When thou once hast passed be} r ond it, haply shall be crystal- 
clear. 

Viewed from that serener realm, the walks of human life may 
lie, 

Tike the page of some familiar volume, open to thine eye ; 

Haply, from the o'erhanging shadow, thou mayst stretch an un- 
seen hand, 

To support the wavering steps that print with blood the rugged 
land. 

Haply leaning o'er the pilgrim, all unweeting thou art near; 

Thou mayst whisper words of warning or of comfort in his ear 

Till, beyond the border where that brooding mystery bars the 
sight 

Those whom thou hast fondly cherished, stand with thee in peace 
and light." 

Though Bryant's poetry is mainly devoted to 
the illustration of some pious thought, or to the 
translation of some of the spiritual sentiments 
which he found concealed in nature's mystic ver- 
nacular, no one could infer from any poem he ever 
wrote the denomination of Christians with which 
he was most in sympathy. Any one of them 
might have claimed him, as all claim Moses and 
the Prophets. 

Dr. Bellows, his pastor during the later years of 
his life, has spoken with authority of his religious 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 285 

character in the discourse pronounced at his funeral. 
" A devoted lover of religious liberty, he was an 
equal lover of religion itself — not in any precise 
dogmatic form, but in its righteousness, reverence, 
and charity. What his theology was, you may 
safely infer from his regular and long attendance 
in this place of Christian worship. Still he was 
not a dogmatist, but preferred practical piety and 
working virtue to all modes of faith. What was 
obvious in him for twenty years past was an 
increasing respect and devotion to religious institu- 
tions, and a more decided Christian quality in his 
faith. I think he had never been a communicant 
in any church until he joined ours, fifteen years 
ago. From that time, nobody so regular in his 
attendance on public worship, in wet and dry, 
cold and heat, morning and evening, until the very 
last month of his life. The increasing sweetness 
and beneficence of his character, meanwhile, must 
have struck his familiar friends. His last years 
were his devoutest and most humane years. He be- 
came beneficent as he grew able to be so, and his 
hand was open to all just need and to many un- 
reasonable claimants. " 

Bryant showed little taste for metaphysical stud- 
ies or speculations. He came into the possession 
of the most profound and important truths, by 
sheltering his judgment from worldly and selfish 
influences, and by extirpating all evil and un- 
worthy proclivities. By making his soul a fitting 
dwelling-place, wisdom sought its hospitality. But 



286 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

he trusted himself rarely to the open sea of 
speculation. His mind was perfectly inaccessible 
to crotchets. When he went to war he always 
equipped himself with proved weapons. Yet he 
was always open to new ideas, and the farthest in 
the world from believing that man had reached 
the limits of knowledge in any direction. No 
man ever had a profounder sense of responsibility 
for what he taught ; and while he listened patiently 
when necessary to the dreams and speculations of 
enthusiasts, he never asked any such indulgence 
from his readers. He never professed to be wiser 
than everybody else, nor to see farther. He never 
shocked the most simple-minded of his readers by 
startling novelties in thought or expression. He 
never plucked truths before they were ripe. He 
never confounded the chemist's laboratory with the 
kitchen, nor served his readers' table with the prod- 
ucts of the crucible, or the retort. 

Bryant shrank from ostentation of any kind, and 
especially from any ostentation of charity, w T hich in 
its gospel acceptation is the highest practical con- 
summation of the religious life. His charity was 
like his own 

. . . " clear spring that midst its herbs 
Wells softly forth and wandering- steeps the roots 
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale 
Of all the good it does." 

There was no phariseeism of any description in 
Bryant's make-up. He treated every neighbor as 
if he were an angel in disguise sent to test his 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 287 

loyalty to the golden rule. For sixteen years, and 
until his death, he was the principal contributor to 
a Christmas treat for the inmates of the North 
Hempstead poor-house. Mr. Cline was instructed 
by him to distribute the surplus of his garden 
among his neighbors, and he informs me that he 
has sometimes given as many as eighty chickens 
to the poor of the village on Thanksgiving Day 
under Mr. Bryant's directions. 

Mr. Cline one day expressed a desire to Bryant 
that some one would prepare a good book of prayers 
for schools. Bryant had one which, with a few 
changes, he thought would answer. Finding it 
acceptable to Mr. Cline, he ordered sixty copies 
for the village school at his own expense. In the 
holidays he always contributed liberally for the ex- 
penses of an entertainment to the school children. 
The winter before the family went to Europe in 
1857, they remained in Roslyn until February. 
On one of the coldest nights of the season, towards 
midnight, Bryant was awakened by a noise under 
his window. On opening it he found there the son 
of one of his neighbors, intoxicated and noisy. 
Bryant went down to him and urged him to go 
home. To this he seemed indisposed. Finally, 
by dint of some management and many entreaties, 
and by bearing him company, Bryant succeeded in 
getting the young man to his own door, half a mile 
or more distant. No one knew that he had this 
failing ; and rather than expose him to the gossip 
of the servants and neighborhood, Bryant passed a 



288 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

couple of hours of a fearfully inclement night, at 
the risk of his own life, in trying to save the life 
as well as character of this young man, who was 
in danger of freezing to death if left to himself. 

He was not in the habit of giving presents, even 
to his family. He gave when and what seemed to 
him to be needed. Neither did he care for presents 
himself, except a box of candy now and then, 
which always pleased him, and with which he was 
always sure to be well provided on holiday occa- 
sions. 

As he prospered in his basket and his store, his 
heart seemed proportionately to swell with sensibil- 
ity for the well-being of others, which he testified in 
a thousand ways, of which no account has ever been 
made except in the Book of Life. He learned to 
regard his worldly possessions as a trust to be con- 
secrated to holy uses. When they abounded he gave 
bountifully, while in his hand-to-hand struggles with 
poverty during the first forty or fifty years of his 
life he sent no one empty away. Two costly in- 
stitutions founded by him, one at Roslyn and the 
other at Cummington, will remain, for generations 
to come, monuments of his judicious munificence. 1 

He had no great faith, however, in the charity 
that limits itself to the relief of physical suffering 
and material wants, except in so far as it might affect 
the benefactor. Knowing that sorrow and privation 
had their own proper uses in the divine economy, 

1 A fine library and reading-room in each of these places were 
built, and liberally stocked with books, entirely at his expense. 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 289 

and that we have only to change ourselves to change 
our environment, he regarded it as a less profitable 
employment of time and money to spend them in 
relieving cases of individual distress than, by his 
example and pen, to enlighten and purify whole 
communities by demonstrating and commending 
sounder principles of thought and conduct. 

Bolingbroke says in one of his letters from La 
Source, " I have a friend in this country who has 
been devoted these five and twenty years to judicial 
astrology. I begin to believe, for I know not 
whether I should wish it or no, that he will have 
the mortification, before he dies, of finding out 
that a quarter of an hour well employed in examin- 
ing principles would have saved him a quarter of a 
century spent about consequences." 

Bryant had much the same notion of the efficacy of 
the charities of the purse which essay to change the 
environment and not the individual, as compared 
with the charity which changes the environment by 
first changing the individual. In a letter to Miss 
Dewey, he discloses this view pretty clearly in some 
comments upon the career of an eminent contem- 
porary. 

" I have read every word of Canon Kingsley's 
'Life and Letters,' and thought better of him for 
reading it. He was very decided in his opinions, 
but very modest in his notion of his own merits ; 
and though conservative in regard to the Anglican 
church, tolerant and kind to those who did not 
agree with him. He was a friend to the humbler 



290 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

classes, and a most faithful and sympathetic pas- 
tor, wearing out his life for his flock ; yet I cannot 
see that he contemplated doing them any good, save 
by personal effort and kind attentions. I do not find 
in any part of the memoir that he sought to improve 
the institutions under which the working class in 
England had been kept poor and degraded." 

Bryant's notion was that as an hour's sun would 
accomplish more than all the fires in all the fire- 
places in the land to warm and light it, so any 
effort of a man of genius like Kingsley to correct 
public abuses, to define and to smooth the paths of 
duty to all classes, to remove restrictions, and to 
adjust the burdens of government more equitably 
among them, might have reached and ameliorated 
the conditions of millions, to whom his name was 
and still is as completely unknown as that of the 
woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears 
and wiped them with her hair. 

With friends whom he knew, or with people whom 
he respected, Bryant was genial, chatty, and enter- 
taining, but never familiar. Even with his family, 
whom he always treated with the utmost tenderness 
and consideration, he was reserved ; while express- 
ing what he thought, rarely revealing what he felt. 
Like Milton, he was frugal though not grudging of 
praise ; and one might have known him for years 
without receiving from him any special evidence of 
the regard which he really entertained. He had 
no objection to lend his presence where it would 
serve a useful purpose, and he rarely refused an 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 291 

application from any charitable or religious organ- 
ization ; but he had a more than ordinary aversion 
to being made a spectacle of to gratify any one's 
vanity or ambition, his own least of all. These 
lines of Shakespeare seem to have been always in 
his mind, if not on his lips : — 

" I love the people 
But do not like to stage me to their eyes. 
Though it do, well, I do not relish well 
Their loud applause and aves vehement ; 
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion 
That does affect it." 

Neither was he a " respecter of persons." He 
sought no one's acquaintance or society because of 
his wealth, or rank, or prominence. His most inti- 
mate friends were among quiet not to say obscure 
and unpretending people. There was no social 
ladder leading to or from his house. It was what 
they were, not who they were, that determined him 
in his choice of friends. 

" I remember," observes Mr. Godwin, " when 
Charles Dickens was here, Mr. Bryant was invited 
by a prominent citizen to meet him at dinner, but 
declined. ' That man,' he said, ' has know r n me 
for years without asking me to his house, and I am 
not going to be made a stool-pigeon to attract birds 
of passage that may be flying about." 

To Dana, who had given some one a letter of in- 
troduction to him, he said : "I shall be glad to be 
useful to him in any way ; but how can you who 
know me ask me to get acquainted w T ith anybody. 



292 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

I do not know that I ever got acquainted with any- 
body, of set purpose, in my life. The three things 
most irksome to me in my transactions with the 
world are, to owe money, to ask a favor, and to 
seek an acquaintance. The few excellent friends 
I have 1 acquired I scarcely know how — certainly 
by no assiduity of my own." 

Bryant had a marvelous memory. His familiar- 
ity with the English poets was such that when at 
sea, where he was always too ill to read much, he 
would beguile the time by reciting to himself page 
after page from favorite poems. He assured me 
that he had never made a voyage long enough to 
exhaust his resources. I once proposed to send 
for a copy of a magazine in which a new poem of 
his was announced to appear. " You need not send 
for it," said he, u I can give it to you." " Then 
you have a copy with you," said I. " No," he 
replied, " but I can recall it," and thereupon pro- 
ceeded immediately to write it out. I congratu- 
lated him upon having such a faithful memory. 
" If allowed a little time," he replied, " I could 
recall every line of poetry I have ever written." 

He rated his memory at its true value, however, 
and never abused it. It was a blooded steed which 
he never degraded to the uses of a pack-horse. 
Hence he was fastidious about his reading as about 
his company, believing there was no worse thief 
than a bad book ; but he never tired of writers who 
have best stood the test of time. He had little 
taste for historical reading. Indeed, the habits of 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. 293 

liis mind were not at all in sympathy with the in- 
ductive method of reaching new truths or prop- 
agating them. He often deplored the increasing 
neglect of the old English classics, which our mod- 
ern facilities for printing were displacing. John- 
son's " Lives of the Poets " was one of his favorite 
books. Pope, who has educated more poets in the 
art of verse-making than any other modern author, 
was, from early youth, his pocket companion. I 
think he had studied him more carefully than any 
other English writer, and was specially impressed 
by his wit. 

One day, as I was looking over the books on the 
shelves of his library at Roslyn, he called my 
attention to his position. " There," said he, " I 
have fallen quite accidentally into the precise atti- 
tude in which Pope is commonly represented, with 
his forehead resting on his fingers." He then got 
up to look for an illustration among his books. He 
did not find what he sought, but he brought two 
other editions, each representing Pope with an 
abundance of hair on his head, one an old folio 
containing a collection of Pope's verses, written be- 
fore he was twenty-five years of age. 

I asked him if he had seen the new edition of 
Pope's works which Elwin was editing. He said 
he had not, nor heard of it. I then told him that 
Elwin left Pope scarcely a single estimable per- 
sonal quality, and had stripped him of a good 
share of the literary laurels which he had hitherto 
worn in peace. He promptly said that he did not 



294 WILLIAM CULL EN BRYANT. 

care to see it ; that he was not disposed to trust 
such a judgment, however ingeniously defended, 
and quoted Young's lines on Pope, " Sweet as 
his own Homer, his life melodious as his verse." 
That, said he, is the judgment of a contemporary. 
He then read some lines from other poets in far- 
ther defense of his favorite. He was unwilling to 
have his idea of Pope disturbed, and when I sug- 
gested that he should get Elwin, he said, " No, I 
want no better edition than Warburton's, the edi- 
tion that was in my father's library, and which I 
read when a boy." Bryant's admiration of Pope is 
the more remarkable, as two characters more un- 
like could not be readily imagined. 

Bryant took but little note of any but moral dis- 
tinctions among men. Mere worldly rank im- 
pressed him as little as any man I ever knew, 
though he appreciated, and no one more justly, 
the qualities that merited such distinction. I was 
once his guest at Roslyn with a member of the 
English peerage, who at the close of the first re- 
past after our arrival presumed upon the privilege 
accorded to persons of his rank at home to rise 
first and dismiss the table,, Mr. Bryant joined me 
on our way to the parlor, and with an expression 
of undisguised astonishment asked me, " Did you 
see that? " I replied that I did, and, with a view 
of extenuating the gentleman's offense as much as 
I could, said that he evidently thought he wa§ only 
exercising one of the recognized prerogatives of his 
order. " Well," he said, " he will have no oppor- 



PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC HABITS. , 295 

tunity of repeating it here ; " and he was as good 
as his word, for during the remainder of our so- 
journ, no one was left in doubt whose prerogative 
it was in that house to dismiss the table. Some 
weeks later he alluded to this incident, and quoted 
from a conversation he had once held with Feni- 
more Cooper his strictures upon this exasperating 
assumption of the titled classes in some communi- 
ties of the Old World. He was willing that others 
should adopt any standard that pleased them best 
by which to rate their fellows, himself included, 
but he would not accept directly or indirectly for 
himself any other standard than that which, so far 
as he knew, his Maker would apply. 

Bryant was a man of the most unassailable dig- 
nity. It was impossible even for his familiars to 
take any liberties with him. His influence upon 
all who entered his presence was akin to that at- 
tributed by Cowley to the daughter of Saul. 

"Merab with spacious beauty filled the sight 
But too much awe chastened the bold delight 
Like a calm sea which to the enlarged view, 
Gives pleasure but gives fear and reverence too." 

" While preparing for college occurred an 
event," says Bryant, " which I remember with re- 
gret. My grandfather Snell had always been sub- 
stantially kind to me and ready to forward any 
plan for my education, but when I did what in his 
judgment was wrong, he reprimanded me with a 
harshness which was not so well judged as it was 
probably deserved. I had committed some foolish 



296 WILL/AM CULLEN BRYANT. 

blunder, and he was chiding with even more than 
his usual severity ; I turned and looked at him 
with a steady gaze. ' What are you staring at ? ' 
he asked, ' did you never see me before ? ' ' Yes,' 
I answered, ' I have seen you many times before.' 
He had never before heard a disrespectful word 
from my lips. He turned and moved away, and 
never reproved me again in that manner, but never 
afterward seemed to interest himself so much as 
before in any matter that concerned me." It is 
harder to forgive a person we have wronged than 
one who has wronged us. That is probably the 
explanation of the change in the grandfather's 
manner and deportment towards his refractory 
grandchild. The heavy armor of puritanical Phil- 
istinism was no proof against the sling and peb- 
bles of this stripling, conscious of deserving and 
brave enough to insist upon better treatment. 



CHAPTER XII. 

LAST DAYS. 

The man who knew so well as Bryant how to 
live must have known as well how to die. It is 
commonly but too true that "un mourant a bien 
pen de chose a dire quand il ne parle niparfai- 
bl esse ni par v an ite" but when Bryant was sum- 
moned to take " his chamber in the silent halls of 
death," he took with him all his noble faculties, 
and neither feebleness nor vanity were among 
them. 

" In years he seemed but not impaired by years." 

It would have been, therefore, in the highest 
degree interesting and instructive to have watched 
him in the process of putting the last enemy 
under his feet, and to have marked the impres- 
sion which the immediate prospect of shedding 
his mortality and of putting on immortality would 
produce on such a rare personality. But this 
was a privilege which Providence did not see fit 
to accord. To his closing days there was to be no 
twilight. He had accepted an invitation to deliver 
an address at the unveiling of a statue to Mazzini, 
the Italian patriot, in Central Park, on Wednes- 



298 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

day, the 29th of May, 1878. He had not been 
feeling well for several days, which, however, did 
not prevent his spending the morning at his office 
in the discharge of customary duties. After a 
light luncheon he was driven to Central Park. 
The day w r as warm. The sun shone so brightly 
that a friend insisted, though with but partial suc- 
cess, upon sheltering his head with an umbrella. 
When he had finished his discourse he appeared 
quite exhausted, and should have returned imme- 
diately to his home. He was too amiable to de- 
cline an invitation from Mr. James Grant Wilson 
to accompany him across the Park to his house, and 
on foot. They ascended the steps together. What 
then occurred has been thus circumstantially re- 
ported by Mr. Wilson. 

" As we approached my house, about four o'clock, 
Mr. Bryant was recalling the scenes of the previous year 
on the occasion of the President's visit as such to New 
York, and he was still, I think, cheerfully conversing on 
that subject as we walked up arm in arm, and entered 
the vestibule. Disengaging my arm, I took a step in 
advance to open the inner door, and during the few sec- 
onds, without the slightest warning of any kind, the ven- 
erable poet, while my back was turned, dropped my 
daughter's hand and fell suddenly backward through the 
open outer door, striking his head on the stone platform 
of the front steps, with one half of his body still lying 
in the vestibule. I turned just in time to see the sick- 
ening sight of the silvered head striking the stone, and 
springing to his side hastily raised him up. He was 
unconscious, and I supposed that he was dead. Ice 



LAST DAYS. 299 

water was immediately applied to the head, and, with 
the assistance of a neighbor's son and the servants, he 
was carried into the parlor. A soft pillow was placed 
at one end for his head, as he lay unconscious at full 
length on the sofa. He was restless, and in a few min- 
utes sat up, and drank the contents of a goblet filled 
with iced sherry, which partially restored him, and he 
asked with a bewildered look, ' Where am I ? I do 
not feel at all well. Oh, my head ! my head ! ' accom- 
panying the words by raising his right hand to his fore- 
head. He now recognized me, and looked curiously 
around the room, still with a dazed and uncertain ex- 
pression : ' Was it not here that President Hayes was 
received ? ' again exclaiming, ' How strangely I feel ; 
I don't know what is the matter with me this afternoon. 
My head ! my head ! ' Still with a bewildered manner, 
as if he were struggling for the recovery of his reason, 
he fixed his eyes keenly on me, and apparently with an 
idea that something had happened to him, and with a 
view to relieving our terrible anxiety concerning him, 
he attempted to make some pleasant remarks. ' Where 
did you say you were building ? ' 'Is that not one 
of Audubon's pictures ? ' ' How many children have 
you ? ' ' Where are you going with your family this 
summer ? ' are a few of the questions that he asked. 
The gentleman, as was remarked of Sir Walter Scott, 
may be said to have survived the genius. Declining to 
retire to a sleeping-room and to permit us to send for 
our own or his physician, he expressed a wish to be 
taken home. He objected to going in a carriage, saying 
he preferred a street car. Although still not quite him- 
self, he expressed his wishes in a most emphatic man- 
ner, and about 4.30 said he would like to start. We 



800 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

accordingly walked together to the corner and entered a 
Madison Avenue car, and whenever the car stopped to 
take on or let off a passenger he would ask, ' Where 
are we now? ' and manifested much impatience to reach 
his residence. For some time he held a few pieces of 
silver in his hand, but when I quietly asked him to re- 
place the money in his pocket he did so. Once on our 
way down he added my name to the usual inquiry 
of ' Where are we now ? ' Calling a carriage, we 
stepped into it from the car at Seventeenth Street, the 
conductor showing us every attention, and drove rapidly 
to his house. Once only on our way did he speak, and 
then to remark, ' I am a very sick man.' On our ar- 
rival his mind again wandered, and looking up he said, 
' Whose house is this ? What street are we in ? Why 
did you bring me here ? ' Without replying, I sooth- 
ingly said, We will step in since we are here, and rest for 
a few minutes, and so gently led him up the steps. 
Reaching the inner door he mechanically took out his 
pass-key, opened it, and returned the key to his pocket, 
when he passed into the parlor, and through to the din- 
ing-room, where he sat down in a large easy-chair. At 
the request of his niece, Miss Fairchild, I assisted him 
upstairs to the library, where he lay down on the lounge, 
and then went for Dr. John F. Gray, who returned with 
me immediately, and on examining the patient said the 
fall was produced by syncope, and had caused concus- 
sion of the brain, but not necessarily fatal. This was 
before six o'clock. At seven he came again, accompa- 
nied by Dr. Carnochan, the eminent surgeon, whose 
views, I understood, coincided with those of Mr. Bry- 
ant's physician. Mr. and Mrs Graham and other in- 
timate family friends arrived, and I then took my leave 
a little before eight o'clock.'' 



LAST DAYS. 301 

In Dr. Gray's report of the case, he said : — 

" Mr. Bryant during the first few days would get up 
and walk about the library or sit in his favorite chair. 
He would occasionally say something about diet and air. 
When his daughter Julia arrived from Atlantic City, 
where she had been for her health, she thought her 
father recognized her, but it is uncertain how far he 
recognized her or any of his friends. The family were 
hopeful and made the most of every sign of conscious- 
ness or recognition. On the eighth day after the fall, 
haemorrhage took place in the brain, resulting in paraly- 
sis, technically called hemiplegia, which extended down 
the right side of the body. After this he was most of 
the time comatose. He was unable to speak, and when 
he attempted to swallow, his food lodged in his larynx 
and choked him. He was greatly troubled with phlegm 
and could not clear his throat. There was only that one 
attack of haemorrhage of the brain, and that was due to 
what is called traumatic inflammation." 

For fourteen sad and tedious days, Bryant thus 
lingered while life was ebbing 

. . . * * unmarked and silent 
" As the slow neap-tide leaves yon stranded galley. 
Late she rocked merrily at the least impulse 
That wind or wave could give ; but now her keel 
Is settling on the sand ; her mast has ta'en 
An angle with the sky from which it shifts not. 
Each wave receding shakes her less and less 
Till bedded on the strand she shall remain 
Useless and motionless." . . . 

At half-past five on the morning of the 12th of 
June, that Jieart which for eighty-four years had 
never rested from its labors ceased to beat. 



302 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

The news of Bryant's death produced an im- 
pression only to be expected from the death of one 
who had long been regarded as the first citizen of 
the republic. His genius and hi*s virtues were the 
theme of every periodical, of every pulpit, and of 
every literary society in the land. For a time, little 
was to be seen or heard but these swirling eddies 
which marked the place where the ship went down. 
The flags of the city where he died and of the 
shipping were raised at half-mast, his portrait was 
displayed in all the shop windows, and his writings 
were in special demand at every bookstore and 
library. 

i% There is probably no eminent man in the coun- 
try," wrote Mr. George William Curtis in " Harper's 
Monthly," " upon whose life and genius and career the 
verdict of his fellow-citizens would be more immediate 
and unanimous. His character and life had a simplicity 
and austerity of outline that had become universally fa- 
miliar, like a neighboring mountain or the sea. His 
convictions were very strong, and his temper uncompro- 
mising ; he was independent beyond most Americans. 
He was an editor and a partisan ; but he held politics 
and all other things subordinate to the truth and the 
common welfare, and his earnestness and sincerity and 
freedom from selfish ends took the sting of personality 
from his opposition, and constantly placated all who, 
like him, sought lofty and virtuous objects. Those who 
watched the character of his influence upon public af- 
fairs, and who saw him daily moving among us a vener- 
able citizen noiselessly going his way, as they marked 
the hot and bitter strife of politics, could not but recall 



LAST DAYS. 308 

the picture by the French painter Couture, of the ' De- 
cadence of Rome,' in which the grave figure of the older 
Roman stands softly contemplating the riotous license 
and luxury of a later day. Bryant carried with him 
the mien and the atmosphere of antique public virtue. 
He seemed a living embodiment of that simplicity and 
severity and dignity which we associate with the old 
republics. A wise stranger would have called him a 
man nurtured in republican air upon republican tradi- 
tions." 

The late Dr. Holland, commenting upon the 
loss the world had sustained in the death of Bryant 
in " Scribner's Monthly,'' of which he was the edi- 
tor, wrote : — 

" By reason of his venerable age, his unquestioned 
genius, his pure and lofty character, his noble achiev- 
ments in letters, his great influence as a public jour- 
nalist, and his position as a pioneer in American litera- 
ture, William Cullen Bryant had become, without a 
suspicion of the fact in his own modest thought, the 
principal citizen of the great republic. By all who 
knew him and by millions who never saw him he was 
held in the most affectionate reverence. When he died, 
therefore, and was buried from sight, he left a sense of 
personal loss in all worthy American hearts. 

" He never sought notoriety, and was never notorious. 
The genuine fame that came to him came apparently 
unsought. It grew with his growth and strengthened 
with his strength, and at the last it became a shadow 
of the man that lengthened momently across the earth 
as his sun descended. Nothing can be purer, nothing 
more natural, nothing more enduring than his reputa- 
tion ; for it was based in real genius, genuine character, 



304 WILLIAM CULL EX BRYANT. 

and legitimate achievement. He never postured him- 
self before the public ; he shrank from all thought of 
producing a sensation ; he had the humblest opinion of 
himself ; and his fame was simply one of the things 
that he would not help and could not hinder. He was 
a man of character, a man of business and affairs, and 
a poet — or perhaps he was first of all a poet, and 
afterward all that made up a complete manhood. These 
are the aspects of the man which seem most worth talk- 
ing about. 

" Mr. Bryant was a poet who could take care of him- 
self and get a living. He could not only do this, but 
he could do a wise and manly part in guiding the poli- 
tics of the country. He could not only manage his own 
private and family affairs in a prosperous way, but he 
could discharge his duties as a citizen and a member of 
society. In his own personal character and history he 
associated probity with genius, purity with art, and the 
sweetest Christianity with the highest culture. He has 
proved to all the younger generation of poets that hys- 
terics are not inspiration, that improvidence is not an 
unerring sign of genius, that Christian conviction and 
Christian character are not indications of weakness, but 
are rather a measure of strength, and that a man may 
be a poet and a poet a man. So much of a certain sort 
of eccentricity has been associated with the poetic tem- 
perament and with poetic pursuits, that, in some minds 
the possession of practical gifts and homely virtues is 
supposed to invalidate all claims to genius. If Mr. Bry- 
ant's life had accomplished nothing more than to prove 
the falsity of this wretched notion, it would have been 
a fruitful one." 

It was to multitudes a disappointment that re- 



LAST DAYS. 305 

spect for his often expressed wishes compelled the 
family to decline the supervacuos konores of an 
ostentatious public funeral. On the 14th, his re- 
mains were taken to All Saints Church, where the 
poet had worshiped for many years. The occa- 
sion attracted a vast throng from every rank of 
life, and far exceeding the seating capacities of the 
church. After the customary devotional exercises, 
the pastor, Dr. Bellows, delivered a feeling and 
impressive discourse, from which I allow myself to 
make a single extract : — 

"It is the glory of this man that his character out- 
shone even his great talent and his large fame. Distin- 
guished equally for his native gifts and his consummate 
culture, his poetic inspiration and his exquisite art, he is 
honored and loved to-day even more for his stainless 
purity of life, his unswerving rectitude of will, his devo- 
tion to the higher interests of his race, his unfeigned 
patriotism, and his broad humanity. It is remarkable 
that with none of the arts of popularity a man so little 
dependent on others' appreciation, so self-subsistent and 
so retiring, who never sought or accepted office, who 
had little taste for cooperation, and no bustling zeal 
in ordinary philanthropy, should have drawn to himself 
the confidence, the honor, and reverence of a great me- 
tropolis, and become, perhaps it is not too much to say, 
our first citizen. It was in spite of a constitutional re- 
serve, a natural distaste for crowds and public occasions, 
and a somewhat chilled bearing towards his kind, that 
he achieved by the force of his great merit and solid 
worth this triumph over the heart of his generation. 
The purity of the snow that enveloped him was more 



306 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

observed than its coldness, and his fellow-citizens be- 
lieved that a fire of zeal for truth, justice, and human 
rights burned steadily at the heart of this lofty person- 
ality, though it never flamed or smoked. And they 
were right ! Beyond all thirst for fame or poetic honor 
lay in Bryant the ambition of virtue. Reputation he 
did not despise, but virtue he revered and sought with 
all his heart. He had an intense self -reverence that 
made his own good opinion of his own motives and 
actions absolutely essential. And though little tempted 
by covetousness, envy, worldliness, or love of power, he 
had his own conscious difficulties to contend with, a 
temper not without turbulence, a susceptibility to in- 
juries, a contempt for the moral weaknesses of others. 
But he labored incessantly at self-knowledge and self- 
control, and attained equanimity and gentleness to a 
marked degree. Let none suppose that the persistent 
force of his will, his incessant industry, his perfect con- 
sistency and coherency of life and character were not 
backed by strong passions. With a less consecrated 
purpose, a less reverent love of truth and goodness, he 
might easily have become acrid, vindictive, or selfishly 
ambitious. But he kept his body under and, a far more 
difficult task for him, his spirit in subjection. God had 
given him a wonderful balance of faculties in a marvel- 
ously harmonious frame. His spirit wore a light and 
lithe vesture of clay that never burdened him. His 
senses were perfect at fourscore. His eyes needed no 
glasses, his hearing was exquisitely fine. His alertness 
was the wonder of his contemporaries. He outwalked 
men of middle age. His tastes were so simple as to be 
almost ascetic. Milk and cereals and fruits were his 
chosen diet. He had no vices and no approach to 



LAST DAYS. 307 

them, and he avoided any and every thing that could 
ever threaten him with the tyranny of the senses or of 
habit. Regular in all his habits he retained his youth 
almost to the last. His power of work never abated, 
and the herculean translation of Homer, which was the 
amusement of the last lustre of his long and busy life, 
showed not only no senility or decline in artistic skill, 
but no decrease of intellectual or physical endurance." 

These ceremonies over at the church, the re- 
mains were immediately taken to Roslyn for inter- 
ment in the cemetery which Bryant had himself 
been largely instrumental in having consecrated 
to the public use, attended by the surviving mem- 
bers of his family and a few of his more intimate 
friends, where they were laid beside those of the 
wife and mother at whose grave he had shed the 
tears of a husband and father twelve years before. 1 

Dr. Bellows availed himself of a pause in the 
preparations to commend to the villagers and other 
persons assembled some of the lessons of Bryant's 
life by reading selections from his poems which had 
been made for the occasion by Mr. John 0. Bry- 
ant, the poet's brother. He then read some ex- 

1 It was a gratification to Bryant's friends that, in the time of 
his death, one of his long- cherished wishes had been realized. 
In one of his sweetest poems, written as early as 1825, he ex- 
pressed the hope 

" That when he came to lie 
At rest within the ground 
'T were pleasant ; that in the flowery June 
When brooks send up a cheerful tune 

And groves a joyous sound 
The Sexton's hand his grave to make, 
The rich, green mountain turf should break.'* 



308 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

tracts from the Scriptures, made a brief prayer, 
and the coffin was lowered to the place prepared 
for it. 

There was probably no time in Bryant's life on 
earth when he occupied so large a space in the 
heart of the nation or so much of its attention as 
in the remaining months of the year succeeding 
his death. It was not till he no longer walked 
among men, till his tongue was still, and the press 
had ceased to be freighted with his strengthening: 
messages of wisdom and patriotic faith, that his 
countrymen began to realize the magnitude of the 
loss they had sustained, and the high rank he 
would take among those for whom, by a noble 
climax, Virgil reserved the Elysian Fields. 

" Patriots were there in freedom's battle slain, 
Priests whose long lives were closed without a stain, 
Bards worthy him who breathed the poet's mind, 
Founders of arts that dignify mankind, 
And lovers of our race, whose labors gave 
Their names a memory that defies the grave." x 

He had left this world with no wish or ambi- 
tion unsatisfied. Life to him had been in no sense 
a disappointment. He had never allowed himself 
to desire what it did not please the Master to send 
to him, nor to repine for anything that was denied 
him. "Thy will be done," had been the daily 
prayer, not on]y of his lips but of his heart and 
life! 

1 As rendered into English by Bryant himself. 



LAST DAYS. 809 

For months, commemorative addresses followed 
each other in convenient succession. That which 
was delivered before the New York Historical So- 
ciety by George William Curtis is entitled to a 
permanent place in our literature. 

The Century Association, which Bryant had 
helped to found, and of which at the time of his 
death he was the president, testified their respect 
for his memory in a special meeting held on the 
12th of November following the poet's death, at 
which poems from the pens of Bayard Taylor, then 
Minister of the United States at Berlin, Richard 
H. Stoddard, and E. C. Stedman were read, and 
an address was delivered by the writer of these 
pages. 

Bryant left two children : the elder, the wife 
of Mr. Parke Godwin, for many years associated 
with him in the editorship of the " Evening Post," 
and Miss Julia Sands Bryant, each of whom has 
been the inspiration of several of their father's 
sweetest poems. 

Mr. Bryant was possessed of a very handsome 
estate, which he devised mainly to his two children 
by a will executed on the 6th of December, 1872, 1 
but he was to a large extent his own executor, hav- 
ing alienated most of his real estate before his 
death in accordance with the provisions of his will. 
The " Evening Post," of which he was the half 
proprietor, was sold two or three years after his 
death for about $900,000. 

1 Appendix B. 



310 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

In the foregoing pages I have attempted to por- 
tray the more prominent features of the most sym- 
metrical man I have ever known. I may be sus- 
pected of having indited a eulogy instead of a biog- 
raphy ; of trying to produce a picture that shall 
be all light and no shadow ; of exhibiting to the 
world a monster of perfections. If I am laj 7 ing 
myself open to such suspicions, I do not know what 
I can change to avoid them, without injustice to 
my theme. I have not sought to conceal anything 
about Mr. Bryant of good or bad that was known 
to me. I have represented his life as it was re- 
vealed to me and as I appreciated it. 

Bryant was born to the same sinful inheritance 
as the rest of us ; but I can say of him with per- 
fect truth, that with his faults he was always at 
war. No one better than he knew the enemies 
with which the human heart is always besieged, — 
the enemies of his own household ; and few men 
ever fought them more valiantly, more persistently, 
or more successfully. Those who knew him only 
in his later years would scarcely believe that he 
had been endowed by nature with a very quick 
and passionate temper. He never entirely over- 
came it, but he held every impulse of his nature to 
such a rigorous accountability, that few have ever 
suspected the struggles with which he purchased 
the self-control which constituted one of the con- 
spicuous graces of his character. Bryant had his 
faults, but he made of them agents of purification. 
He learned from them humility and faith, a wise 



LAST BAYS. 311 

distrust of himself, and an unfaltering trust in 
Him through whose aid he was strengthened to 
keep them in abeyance. By God's help he con- 
verted the tears of his angels into pearls. 

It was this constant and successful warfare 
upon every unworthy and degrading propensity 
that sought an asylum in his heart that made him 
such a moral force in the country, that invested 
any occasion to which he lent his presence with an 
especial dignity, that gave to his personal exam- 
ple a peculiar power and authority, that made his 
career a model which no one can contemplate 
without being edified, which no one can study 
closely without an inclination to imitate, and 
which no one can imitate without strengthening 
some good impulses and weakening the hold upon 
him of every bad one. 



APPENDIX A. 
REMINISCENCES OF THE "EVENING POST." 

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Extracted from the Evening Post of November 15, 1851, with ad- 
ditions and corrections by the writer. 

On the 15th inst. closed the first half century of the 
Evening Post. It may not be without entertainment 
to our readers, and, perhaps, not entirely without in- 
struction, if we now take a brief survey of its past his- 
tory ; in other words, if we write the Life of the Even- 
ing Post. 

The first number of the Evening Post appeared on 
the 16th of November, 1801, printed on a sheet a little 
more than a quarter of the present size of the journal. 
It was established by William Coleman, a barrister from 
Massachusetts, then in the prime of manhood, who had 
won the good will of the distinguished federalists of that 
day — Hamilton, King, Jay, and many others, worthy 
by their talents and personal character to be the as- 
sociates of these eminent men. They saw in Mr. Cole- 
man a combination of qualities which seemed to fit him 
for the conductor of a daily political paper in those 
times of fervid and acrimonious controversy, and several 
of the most public-spirited of them furnished him the 
means of entering upon the undertaking. 

Mr. Coleman was a man of robust make, of great ap- 



APPENDIX. 313 

pearance of physical strength, and of that temperament 
which some physiologists call the sanguine. He was 
fond of pleasure, but capable of exertion when the occa- 
sion required it, and, as he was not disinclined to con- 
troversy, the occasion often arose. His temper was 
generous and sincere, his manners kind and courteous ; 
he was always ready to meet more than half way the 
advances of an enemy ; a kind or appealing word dis- 
armed his resentment at once, and a pitiful story, even 
though a little improbable, always moved his compassion. 
He delighted in athletic exercises before his health 
failed, and while yet residing in Massachusetts is said, 
in Buckingham's Reminiscences, to have skated in an 
evening from Greenfield to Northampton, a distance of 
twenty miles. He was naturally courageous, and hav- 
ing entered into a dispute, he never sought to decline 
any of its consequences. His reading lay much in the 
lighter literature of our language, and a certain elegance 
of scholarship which he had the reputation of possess- 
ing was reckoned among his qualifications as a jour- 
nalist. 

The original prospectus of the Evening Post, though 
somewhat measured in its style, was well written. The 
editor, while avowing his attachment to the federal 
party, acknowledges that " in each party are honest and 
virtuous men," and expresses his persuasion that the 
people need only to be well informed to decide public 
questions rightly. He seems to contemplate a wider 
sphere of objects than most secular newspapers of the 
present day, and speaks of his design " to inculcate just 
principles in religion," as well as in " morals and poli- 
tics." Some attempt was made to carry out this inten- 
tion. In one of the earlier numbers is a communication 



•314 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

in reply to a heresy avowed by the American Citizen, a 
democratic daily paper of that time, in which it had 
been maintained that the soul was material, and that 
death was a sleep of the mind as well as the body. Still 
later, in an editorial article, appeared a somewhat elab- 
orate discussion of the design of the Revelation of 
St. John. 

New York, at that time, contained a little more than 
sixty thousand inhabitants, and scarcely extended north 
of the City Hall and its Park. Beyond, along Broad- 
way, were then country houses and green fields. That 
vast system of foreign and internal intercourse, those 
facilities of communication by sail, by steamers, by rail- 
ways, the advertisements of which now fill column after 
column in our largest daily newspapers, was not then 
dreamed of ; and the few ships and sloops soliciting 
freight and passengers did not furnish advertisements 
enough to fill a single column in the small sheet of the 
Evening Post. Yet, the names which appear in the 
advertisements of its very first number indicate a cer- 
tain permanence in the mercantile community. The 
very first advertisers in the first number of the paper 
are Hoffman & Seaton. In the same sheet appear the 
names of N. L. & G. Griswold, names which, extending 
over a space of fifty years, connect the commencement 
of the nineteenth century, on which we have now en- 
tered, with the last half of the eighteenth. Here, too, 
appear the advertisements of Frederick Depeyster, of 
William Neilson, Richard & John Thorne, Bethune & 
Smith, Gouverneur & Kemble, Archibald Gracie, and 
John Murray. At a later period, in the first year of 
the paper, came in the names of Minturn & Champlin, 
of Aspinwall, Mc Vicar, and Oakey. 



APPENDIX. 315 

T. & J. Swords, whose names are familiar to all 
readers of American publications, then had their book- 
store at 99 Pearl Street ; J. Mesier sold books at 107 
Pearl Street ; Brown & Stansbury, at 114 Water Street ; 
George F. Hopkins and D. Longworth, familiar names, 
were then following the same vocation, and J. W. Fenn 
was offering the American Ladies' Pocket Book for 
1802, just published at Philadelphia, in a long and elab- 
orate advertisement, describing the elegant engravings 
with which it was embellished. 

Among the advertisements in the early numbers of 
the paper* are some which show that the domestic slave 
trade was then in existence in the State of New York. 
In one, "a young negro woman, twenty-one years of 
age," " capable of all kinds of work, and an excellent 
cook," was offered for sale, " for want of employment." 
A black woman, " twenty-six years of age, and a good 
cook," was offered for sale " on reasonable terms." The 
advertisers seem to have been willing to avoid publicity 
in this matter, for no names are given ; but in the first 
of these cases, the purchaser is referred to the printer, 
and in the other, the name of the street and number of 
the house at which application is to be made are given. 

In the outset, Mr. Coleman made an effort to avoid 
those personal controversies, which at the time were so 
common among conductors of party papers, and with 
which their columns were so much occupied. In the 
leading article of his first number, signed with his 
initials, he expresses his abhorrence of " personal vir- 
ulence, low sarcasm, and verbal contentions with prin- 
ters and editors," and his determination not to be di- 
verted from " the line of temperate discussion." He 
found this resolution difficult to keep. 



316 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

At that time, besides the American Citizen, published 
at New York, a democratic daily print was issued in 
Philadelphia, called the Aurora, with both of which the 
Evening Post soon found itself involved in unpleasant 
disputes. James Cheetham was the editor of the Ameri- 
can Citizen. He is called by Bronson, conductor of 
the Philadelphia United States Gazette, in an affidavit, 
u an Englishman and a hatter," and appears to have 
been a man of coarse mind and manners, and not easily 
abashed. The occasional replies to his attacks in the 
Evening Post indicate that he kept up a pretty con- 
stant fire of small personalities. In the fourth number 
of the paper, the Evening Post answers an insinuation 
that a letter published in its columns was not authentic. 
The editor cautions " Mr. Cheetham " to beware of 
wantonly repeating the insinuation, protesting that he 
will not allow any impeachment of his veracity, and that 
he will not engage in a contest of abusive epithets. The 
editor of the Aurora was William Duane, a native of 
Ireland, whom the Evening Post stigmatized as " a 
low-bred foreigner." In all its contentions with these 
journals, as the organ of their party, the squabble is 
always with Mr. Cheetham and Mr. Duane, most com- 
monly without any mention of their respective papers, 
and these men in return seem to have conducted the 
warfare in the same spirit, and to have thought that if 
they could but bring Mr. Coleman into personal dis- 
credit, they should have demolished the federal party. 

The Evening Post of the 24th of November records 
the death of Philip Hamilton, eldest son of General 
Alexander Hamilton, in the twentieth year of his age 
— " murdered," says the editor, " in a duel." The prac- 
tice of dueling is then denounced as a " horrid custom," 



APPENDIX. 611 

the remedy for which must be "strong and pointed 
legislative interference," inasmuch u as fashion has placed 
it on a footing which nothing short of that can control." 
The editor himself belonged to the class with which 
fashion had placed it upon that footing, and was des- 
tined himself to be drawn by her power into the prac- 
tice he so strongly deprecated. 

The quarrel with Cheetham went on. On the next 
day, in a discussion occasioned by the duel in which 
young Hamilton fell, he mentioned Cheetham, and spoke 
of " the insolent vulgarity of that base wretch." At a 
subsequent period, the Evening Post went so far as, in 
an article reflecting severely upon Cheetham and Duane, 
to admit the following squib into its columns : — 

" Lie on Duane, lie on for pay, 

And Cheetham, lie thou too ; 
More against truth you cannot say, 
Than truth can say 'gainst you.' ' 

These wranglings were continued a few years, until 
the Citizen made a personal attack upon Mr. Coleman 
of so outrageous a nature that he determined to notice 
it in another manner. Cheetham was challenged. He 
was ready enough in a war of words, but he had no in- 
clination to pursue it to such a result. The friends of 
the parties interfered ; a sort of truce was patched up, 
and the Citizen consented to become more reserved in 
its future assaults. 

A subsequent affair, of a similar nature, in which 
Mr. Coleman was engaged, was attended with a fatal 
termination. A Mr. Thompson had a difference with 
him which ended in a challenge. The parties met in 
Love Lane, now Twenty-first Street, and Thompson fell. 
He was brought, mortally wounded, to his sister's house 



318 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

in town ; he was laid at the door, the bell was rung, the 
family came out, and found him bleeding and near his 
death. He refused to name his antagonist, or give any 
account of the affair, declaring that everything which 
had been done was honorably done, and desired that 
no attempt should be made to seek out or molest his 
adversary. Mr. Coleman returned to New York and 
continued to occupy himself with his paper as before. 

Such is the tradition which yet survives concerning 
the event of a combat to which the parties, who bore no 
previous malice to each other, were forced by the com- 
pulsion of that " fashion " against which one of them, 
on the threshold of his career as a journalist, had pro- 
tested, even while indirectly recognizing its supremacv. 
The quarrel arose out of political differences, Mr. Cole- 
man being in the opposition, and Mr. Thompson a friend 
of the administration. 

When the Evening Post was established, William 
Dunlap, author of a History of the Arts of Design, and a 
History of the American Stage, whose books are in the 
hands of many of our readers, and whose paintings, after 
he returned to his original profession of an artist, many of 
them have seen, was manager of the Park Theatre. At 
that time the fashionable part of the New York popula- 
tion were much more frequent in their attendance at 
the theatre than now, and the Evening Post contained 
frequent theatrical criticisms, written with no little care, 
and dwelling at considerable length on the merits and 
faults of the performers. Public concerts were also 
criticised with some minuteness. Still lighter subjects 
sometimes engaged the attention of the editor. In 1802 
the style of the ladies' dresses was such as to call forth, 
in certain quarters, remarks similar to those which are 



APPENDIX. 319 

now often made on the Bloomer costume. On the 18th 
of May, 1802, the Evening Post, answering a female 
correspondent who asks why it has not, like the other 
newspapers, censured the prevailing mode, says : — 

" Female dress, of the modern Parisian cut, however de- 
ficient in point of the ornament vulgarly called clothing 
must at least be allowed to he not entirely -without its ad- 
vantages. If there is danger of its making the gentlemen 
too prompt to advance, let it not be unobserved that it fits 
the lady to escape. Unlike the dull drapery of petticoats 
worn some years since, but now banished to the nursery or 
kitchen, the present light substitute gives an air of celerity 
which seems to say — Catch me if you can." 

We are not sufficiently skilled in the history of the 
modes of former days to inform our readers what was 
the substitute for petticoats which is here alluded to. 

In the Evening Post, during the first twenty years of 
its existence, there is much less discussion of public ques- 
tions by the editors than is now common in all classes of 
newspapers. The editorial articles were mostly brief, with 
hut occasional exceptions, nor does it seem to have been 
regarded, as it now is, necessary for a daily paper to 
pronounce a prompt judgment on every question of a 
public nature the moment it arises. The annual mes- 
sage sent by Mr. Jefferson to Congress in 1801 was 
published in the Evening Post of the 12th of December, 
without a word of remark. On the 17th a writer who 
takes the signature of Lucius Crassus begins to examine 
it. The examination is continued through the whole 
winter, and finally, after having extended to eighteen 
numbers, is concluded on the 8th of April. The resolu- 
tions of General Smith, for the abrogation of discrim- 
inating duties, laid before Congress in the same winter, 



320 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

were published without comment, but a few days after- 
wards they were made the subject of a carefully written 
animadversion, continued through several numbers of 
that paper. 

Mr. Coleman had no skill as a manager of property ; 
he took little thought for the morrow ; when he hap- 
pened to have any money, it was spent freely, or given 
away, or somebody who would never return it contrived 
to borrow it. In a short time the finances of the Even- 
ing Post became greatly confused and embarrassed. 
From its first appearance, the journal bore, in a card at 
the bottom of its final column, the name of Michael 
Burnham, as the printer and publisher ; he had, how- 
ever, no projDerty in the paper. Mr. Burnham was a 
young printer from Hartford, in Connecticut, a man of 
sense, probity, and decision, industrious and frugal, with 
an excellent capacity for business ; in short, he was just 
such a man as every newspaper ought to have among 
its proprietors, in order to insure its prosperity. The 
friends of Mr. Coleman saw the importance of associat- 
ing Mr. Burnham with him in the ownership of the 
paper, and negotiations were opened for the purpose. 
The result was, that the entire control of the finances of 
the Evening Post was placed in Mr. Burnham's hands, 
under such regulations as were prescribed in the ar- 
ticles of copartnership. From that time the affairs of 
the journal became prosperous ; it began to yield a re- 
spectable revenue ; Mr. Coleman was relieved from his 
pecuniary embarrassments, and Mr. Burnham began to 
grow rich. He died in the beginning of 1836, worth 
two hundred thousand dollars, acquired partly by his 
prudent management of the concerns of the paper, 
and partly by the rise in the value of real estate. Mr. 



APPENDIX, 321 

Coleman died in 1829, worth, perhaps, a quarter of that 
sura. 

The Evening Post, until the close of the second war 
with Great Britain, was a prominent and leading journal 
of the federal party. It took its share in the heated 
discussions of the non-intercourse law, the embargo, 
and, finally, the justice of our war with Great Britain, 
and the wisdom with which it was managed. On the 
question of cooperating with the government in that 
war, the New York federalists differed with those of 
New England ; they held that when the country was once 
engaged in a war, the citizen could not rightfully take 
any step to obstruct its prosecution, but must give the 
common cause his cheerful aid and support till peace 
should be made. When the New England States held 
their Convention at Hartford, the New York federalists 
refused to send delegates, and their refusal was sustained 
by the Evening Post. Mr. Coleman, however, went to 
Hartford on that occasion, as an observer. We recol- 
lect that, some years afterwards, in his journal, he 
taunted Theodore D wight, then editor of the Daily Ad- 
vertiser, in this city, with having been the Secretary of 
the Hartford Convention. Mr. Dwight replied that 
his accuser was also a participator in the doings of that 
body, and spoke of his presence there as the representa- 
tive of the New York federalists. Against this imputa- 
tion, .Mr. Coleman defended himself with warmth, and 
in his usual frank and sincere manner stated very mi- 
nutely the object and circumstances of his visit. From 
this narrative, his ingenious adversary, who would other- 
wise have had little to say, contrived, by a skillful selec- 
tion of expressions and circumstances, to make out a 
plausible though by no means a fair case against him. 



322 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

About the year 1819, the health of Mr. Coleman was 
seriously affected by a paralytic attack. Until then he 
had found no occasion for a coadjutor in his labors as 
an editor. Several slighter shocks followed ; his lower 
limbs became gradually weak and unmanageable, until 
he was wholly unable to walk without support. Differ- 
ent assistants were called in from time to time, but they 
were again dismissed as soon as Mr. Coleman was able 
to be in his chair. It was while he was in this condi- 
tion that an affair took place which was thought by his 
friends to have greatly impaired his health. A person 
named Hagerman, holding a public office, had been 
guilty of some improper conduct at one or two hotels in 
the interior of the State. The story was a nauseous one, 
but Mr. Coleman, thinking that such behavior deserved 
public exposure, gave it with all its particulars in his 
sheet. Hagerman was furiously enraged, and having no 
other answer to make, watched his opportunity, while 
Mr. Coleman was driving to his office in a little wagon, 
fell upon him with a cane, and beat him so severely 
that he was obliged to keep his room for a considerable 
time. 

About this time it was said that a remedy had been 
discovered for the hydrophobia in the herb called skull- 
cap, a species of Scutellaria, so named from the peculiar 
shape of its seed vessels, resembling a plain close-fitting 
cap for the head. The Evening Post took great pains 
to bring the subject before the public, collected examples 
of the virtues of the plant, and insisted on its efficacy so 
frequently and with such warmth as to occasion some 
jokes at its expense. 

This period of the existence of the Evening Post was 
illuminated by the appearance of the poems of Halleck 



APPENDIX, 323 

and Drake in its columns, under the signatures of 
Croaker, and Croaker & Co., in which the fashions and 
follies, and sometimes the politicians of the day, were 
made the subjects of a graceful and good-natured ridi- 
cule. The numbers containing these poems were eagerly 
sought for ; the town laughed, the subjects of the satire 
laughed in chorus, and all thought them the best things 
of the kind that were ever written ; nor were they far 
wrong. At a subsequent period within the last twenty- 
five years another poem, which, though under a dif- 
ferent signature, might be called the epilogue to the 
Croakers, was contributed by Mr. Halleck to the paper. 
It was addressed to the Honorable Richard Hiker, Re- 
corder, better known as Dick Riker. This poem, with 
the marks of a riper intellect, is as witty as the best of 
the Croakers. 

In the fusion of parties which took place after the 
second war with Great Britain, the Evening Post lost 
somewhat of its decided federal character. When a 
successor to Mr. Monroe was to be elected to the Pres- 
idency of the United States, the Evening Post sup- 
ported the claims of Mr. Crawford. No choice, as our 
readers know, was made by the people, and the election 
devolved upon the House of Representatives, who con- 
ferred the office upon Mr. Adams. 

It was in the year 1826, a quarter of a century 
from the first issue of the Evening Post, that William 
C. Bryant, now one of its conductors, began to write for 
its columns. At that time the population of New York 
had grown from sixty thousand, its enumeration in 
1801, to a hundred and eighty thousand. The space 
covered with houses had extended a little beyond Canal 
Street, and on each side of Broadway a line of dwell- 



324 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

ings, with occasional vacant spaces, had crept up as far 
as Fourth Street. Preparations were making to take 
up the monuments in the Potter's field, now the site of 
Washington Square, and fill it up to the level of Fourth 
Street. Workmen were employed in opening the street 
now called St. Mark's Place, and a dusty avenue had 
just been made through the beautiful farm of the old 
Governor Stuyvesant, then possessed by his descendants. 
The sheet of the Evening Post had been somewhat 
enlarged, the number of its advertisements had been 
doubled since its first appearance, they were more 
densely printed, and two columns of them were steam- 
boat advertisements. But the eye, in running over a 
sheet of the Evening Post printed at that time, misses 
the throng of announcements of public amusements, 
lectures, concerts, and galleries of pictures, that now 
solicit the reader's attention ; the elaborately displayed 
advertisements of the rival booksellers, of whom there 
are now several houses, any one of which publishes 
yearly a greater number of works than all the book- 
sellers of New York then did ; the long lists of com- 
mercial agencies and expresses, and the perpendicular 
rows of cuts of ships, steamboats, and railway engines 
which now darken the pages of our daily sheet. 

The Evening Post at that time was much occupied 
with matters of local interest, the sanitary condition of 
the city, the state of its streets, its police, its regulations 
of various kinds, in all which its conductors took great 
interest. There was little of personal controversy at 
that time in its columns. 

The personal appearance of Mr. Coleman at that 
period of his life was remarkable. He was of a full 
make, with a broad chest, muscular arms, which he 



APPENDIX. 325 

wielded lightly and easily, and a deep-toned voice ; but 
his legs dangled like strings. He expressed himself in 
conversation with fluency, energy, and decision, partic- 
ularly when any subject was started in which he had 
taken an interest in former years. When, however, he 
came at that period of his life to write for the press, he 
had the habit of altering his first draught in a manner 
to diminish its force, by expletives and qualifying expres- 
sions. He never altered to condense and strengthen, 
but almost always to dilute and weaken. 

Immediately after Mr. Bryant became connected with 
the Evening Post, it began to agitate the question of 
free trade. The next year he became one of the pro- 
prietors of the paper. Mr. Coleman and Mr. Burnham, 
who desired to avail themselves of the activity and 
energy of younger minds, offered at the same time a 
share in the paper to Robert C. Sands, a man of wit 
and learning, whose memory is still tenderly cherished 
by numbers who had the good fortune to know him 
personally. He entertained it favorably at first, but 
finally declined it. A majority of both Houses of Con- 
gress were in favor of protective duties, and the Even- 
ing Post, at that time, was the only journal north of 
the Potomac which attempted to controvert them. In 
the northern part of the Union, it was only in certain 
towns on the seacoast that a few friends of a freer com- 
mercial system were found ; the people of the interior 
of the Atlantic States and the entire population of the 
West seemed to acquiesce, without a scruple, in the 
policy of high duties. The question of modifying the 
tariff, so as to make it more highly protective, was 
brought up before Congress in the winter of 1828, and 
on the 19th of May following, a bill prepared for that 



326 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

purpose became a law. It was warmly opposed in the 
Evening Post, and the course of Mr. Webster, who had 
formerly spoken with great ability against protection, 
but who had now taken his place among its supporters, 
was animadverted upon with some severity. That 
gentleman, in a letter to Mr. Coleman, justified his con- 
duct by saying that the protective system was now the 
established policy of the country, and that taking things 
as they were, he had only endeavored to make this sys- 
tem as perfect and as equally beneficial to every quar- 
ter of the Union as was possible. 

In contending against the doctrine of protection, the 
Evening Post gradually fell into a position of hostility 
to the administration of Mr. Adams, by which that 
doctrine was zealously maintained. In the election of 
1828, it took the field in favor of the nomination of 
General Jackson, who had declared himself in favor of 
a "judicious tariff," by which his friends understood a 
mitigation of the existing duties. Mr. Coleman lived 
to see the triumph of his party, and to hear the cheers 
of the exulting multitude at his door. In the summer 
following, the summer of 1829, he was cut off by an 
apoplectic stroke. William Leggett, who had earned a 
reputation for talent and industry by his conduct of the 
Critic, a weekly journal, several of the last numbers of 
which were written entirely by himself, put in type with 
his own hand, and delivered by himself to the sub- 
scribers, was immediately employed as an assistant 
editor. He only stipulated that he should not be asked 
to write articles on political subjects, on which he had 
no settled opinions, and for which he had no taste — a 
dispensation which was readily granted. Before this 
year was out, however, he found himself a zealous 



APPENDIX. 327 

democrat, and an ardent friend of free trade, and in 
the year 1830 became one of the proprietors of the 
paper. 

Mr. Leggett was a man of middle stature, but com- 
pact frame, great power of endurance, and a constitu- 
tion naturally strong, though somewhat impaired by an 
attack of the yellow fever while on board the United 
States squadron in the West Indies. He was fond of 
study, and delighted to trace principles to their remotest 
consequences, whither he was always willing to follow 
them. The quality of courage existed in him almost 
to excess, and he took a sort of pleasure in bearding 
public opinion. He wrote with surprising fluency, and 
often with eloquence, took broad views of the questions 
that came before him, and possessed the faculty of 
rapidly arranging the arguments which occurred to him 
in clear order, and stating them persuasively. 

The acts of General Jackson's administration brought 
up the question of the power of the federal government to 
make public roads within the limits of the different States, 
and the question of renewing the charter of the United 
States Bank. With what zeal he was supported by the 
Evening Post, in his disapproval of the works of " internal 
improvement," as they were called, sanctioned by Con- 
gress, and in his steady refusal to sign the bills presented 
to him for continuing the United States Bank in ex- 
istence, many of our readers doubtless remember. The 
question of national roads, after some sharp controversy, 
was disposed of finally, perhaps, and forever ; the con- 
test for the existence of the National Bank was longer 
and more stubborn, but the popular voice decided it, at 
last, in favor of the President. 

The first sign of a disposition in the country to relax 



328 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

the protective policy was given in General Jackson's 
administration, when the law of 1832, sometimes called 
the compromise tariff, was passed, providing for the 
gradual reduction of the duties, on all imported goods, 
to the rate of twenty per cent, on their value. Mr. 
McLane, the Secretary of the Treasury, had proposed 
a somewhat reduced tariff, in his annual report, and 
Mr. Verplanck, in the House of Representatives, had 
introduced a bill on a still more liberal basis. The com- 
promise swept them both away ; but the compromise was 
welcomed by the friends of free trade in the Union, as 
indicative of a great revolution in public opinion, and 
as a virtual abandonment of the protective policy. Since 
that time, the doctrines of commercial liberty, so early 
espoused by the Evening Post, have been making 
gradual progress, till they are professed by large ma- 
jorities in many parts of the North, and have pervadad 
almost the entire West. 

Those who recollect what occurred when General 
Jackson withdrew the funds of the government from the 
Bank of the United States, a measure known by the 
name of the removal of the deposits, cannot have for- 
gotten to what a pitch party hatred was then carried. 
It was a sort of fury ; nothing like it had been known 
in this community for twenty years, and there has been 
nothing like it since. Men of different parties could 
hardly look at each other without gnashing their teeth ; 
deputations were sent to Congress to remonstrate with 
General Jackson, and some even talked — of course it 
was mere talk, but it showed the height of passion to 
which men were transported — of marching in arms to 
the seat of government and putting down the adminis- 
tration. A brief panic took possession of the money 



APPENDIX. 329 

market ; many worthy men really believed that the 
business and trade of the country were in danger of 
coming to an end, and looked for a universal ruin. In 
this tempest the Evening Post stood its ground, vindi- 
cated the administration in its change of agents, on 
the ground that the United States Bank was unsafe and 
unworthy, and derided both the threats and the fears of 
the whigs. 

In June, 1834, Mr. Bryant sailed for Europe, leav- 
ing Mr. Leggett sole conductor of the Evening Post. 
Mr. Burnham had previously withdrawn as a proprietor, 
substituting his son in his place. The battle between the 
friends and enemies of the Bank proceeded with little 
diminution of virulence, but the panic had passed away. 
The Evening Post was led by the discussion of the 
Bank question to inquire into the propriety of allowing 
the state banks to exist as monopolies, with peculiar 
powers and prerogatives not enjoyed by individuals. It 
demanded a general banking law, which should place on 
an equal footing every person desirous of engaging in 
the business of banking. It attacked the patronage of 
the federal executive, and insisted that the postmasters 
should be chosen by the people in the neighborhoods to 
which they ministered. A system of oppressive inspec- 
tion laws had gradually grown up in the State, — tobacco 
was inspected, flour was inspected, beef and pork were 
inspected, and a swarm of creatures of the state gov- 
ernment was called into being, who subsisted by fees 
exacted from those who bought and sold. Nobody was 
allowed to purchase an uninspected and untaxed barrel 
of flour, or an uninspected and untaxed plug of tobacco. 
The Evening Post renewed its attacks on the abuse, 
which had previously been denounced in its columns, and 



330 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

called for the entire abrogation of the whole code of 
inspection laws. The call was answered some years 
afterwards, when the subject was taken up in earnest 
by the legislature, and the system broken up. 

Meantime, another question had arisen. The Wash- 
ington Telegraph had procured printed reports of the 
Abolition Society, in New York, then a small body, and 
little known to the public, and extracting the most offen- 
sive passages, held them up to the people of the South 
as proofs of a deliberate design on the part of the North 
to deprive the planters of their slaves, without their 
consent and without remuneration. Other extracts fol- 
lowed from day to day, with similar inflammatory com- 
ments, till at length the Southern blood took fire, and the 
Southern merchants began to talk of ceasing to trade 
with New York. The New York commercial commu- 
nity disclaimed all sympathy with the abolitionists, and 
to prove its sincerity, began to disturb their meetings. 
From slight disturbances the transition was easy to 
frightful riots, and several of these, in which the genteel 
mob figured conspicuously, occurred in the year 1835, 
at different places within the State. The meetings of 
the abolitionists were broken up, their houses were 
mobbed, and Arthur Tappan was obliged, for a while, 
to leave the city, where his person was not safe. The 
Evening Post at first condemned the riots, and vindi- 
cated the right of assembling, and the right of speech. 
As the mob grew more lawless, it took bolder ground, 
and insisted that the evil and the wrong of slavery were 
so great that the abolitionists were worthy of praise and 
sympathy in striving for its extinction. It rang this 
doctrine from day to day in the ears of the rioters and 
their abettors, and confronted and defied their utmost 



APPENDIX. 331 

malice. No offer was made, in the midst of all this ex- 
citement, to mob the office of this paper. 

During Mr. Bryant's absence in Europe, the interest 
of the younger Burnham was purchased for his two 
associates, who thus became the sole proprietors. 

In October, 1835, Mr. Leggett became seriously ill ; 
he returned to his labors after a short interval ; but a 
relapse came on, and confined him to a sick room for 
months. Mr. Bryant returned in the spring of 1836 
from Europe, and found him still an invalid, the edi- 
torial chair being ably filled, for the time, by Charles 
Mason, since distinguished as a lawyer in Iowa. He 
resumed his labors, and engaged in the controversy re- 
specting the state banks, which was then at its height, 
and which continued to agitate the community till the 
adoption of a general banking law by the State, and of 
the independent treasury scheme by the federal govern- 
ment. 

In the month of June, 1836, an attempt was made in 
different parts of the State to compel journeymen to re- 
frain from entering into any understanding with each 
other in regard to the wages they would demand of 
their employers. Twelve journeymen tailors were in- 
dicted in this city for the crime of refusing to work, 
except for a certain compensation, and a knot of journey- 
men shoemakers at Hudson. In this city, Judge Ed- 
wards, — Ogden Edwards, — and at Hudson, Judge 
Savage, laid down the law against the accused, pro- 
nouncing their conduct a criminal conspiracy, worthy of 
condign punishment. The Evening Post took up the 
charge of Judge Edwards almost as soon as it fell 
from his lips, and showed its inconsistency with the 
plainest principles of personal freedom, with the spirit 



332 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

of all our institutions and laws, and with the rule by 
which we allow all employers and purchasers to regulate 
their transactions. The other journals of the city took 
a different view of the question, but the doctrine main- 
tained by the Evening Post commended itself to the 
public mind, and is now the prevailing and universal 
one. 

In October of the same year, Mr. Leggett, after a 
sojourn of some months in the country, returned to his 
office with his health in part restored. His return led 
. to an examination of the finances of the Evening Post, 
which had suffered very much during his illness. Its 
circulation, though lessened, was still respectable, but its 
advertising list was greatly diminished, and its income 
was not more than a quarter of what it had been. Some 
of its friends had been alienated by the vehemence with 
which the journal had attacked slavery and its defend- 
ers. The proprietors of steamboats and ships, and those 
who had houses to let, had withdrawn their advertise- 
ments, because no cuts, designed to attract the atten- 
tion of the reader, were allowed a place in its columns. 
Mr. Leggett. with an idea of improving the appearance 
of his daily sheet, had rigidly excluded them. 

This examination ended in the retirement of Mr. 
Leggett from the paper. He established a weekly sheet, 
the Plaindealer, which he conducted for about a year 
with great ability, and which, but for the failure of his 
publisher, would have been highly successful, as was 
evident from the rapid increase of its circulation so long 
as it was published. 

About the close of the year, two passenger ships from 
Europe, the Mexico and the Bristol, were wrecked at 
the mouth of the New York harbor, covering the shore 



APPENDIX. 333 

with corpses. The Evening Post showed that this dis- 
aster arose from the negligence of the New York pilots, 
who were unwisely allowed a monopoly of the business, 
and joined with the mercantile community in demand- 
ing such a change as should subject them to the whole- 
some influence of competition. The change was made 
in the same winter. 

We have mentioned the short panic of 1834. It was 
followed by a season of extravagant confidence, and of 
delirious speculation, encouraged by all the banks, — 
that of Mr. Biddle and the deposit banks cooperating 
in a mad rivalry, — a season such as the country had 
never seen before. It might sound like a vain boast 
of superior discernment to say that the Evening Post 
insisted, all along, that the apparent prosperity of the 
country was but temporary, that its end was close at 
hand, and that it would be followed by a general col- 
lapse and by universal distress — but it is nevertheless 
true, and as we are writing the history of our journal, 
it must be said. The crash came quite as soon as the most 
far-sighted had anticipated, and thousands were ruined ; 
the banks stopped payment, and the Legislature of New 
York, in a fright, passed a sort of stop law in their favor, 
absolving them from the engagement to pay their notes 
in specie. 

It was shortly before this collapse, in the year 1837, 
that Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, a senator in Congress, 
from this State, gave the country his famous speech on 
the credit system, the object of which was to justify the 
practices of the banks at that time, and of those to 
whom the banks furnished the means for their specula- 
tions. His eulogy of the credit system was attacked in 
the Evening Post ; he replied in the tone of a man who 



334 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

had been wronged ; he was answered ; his friends got up 
a letter, signed by several hundred democrats, certify- 
ing to the political orthodoxy of Mr. Tallin adge and his 
credit system ; the Evening Post attacked both the letter 
and its signers. Mr. Tallmadge struggled a little while 
longer to maintain his place in the democratic party, 
and then sought a temporary refuge among the whigs. 
At that time, the Times, a democratic morning paper, 
in the interest of Mr. Tallmadge and his friends, was 
published in the city. The Evening Post had occasion 
to allude to the men who made the Times their instru- 
ment. The editor of the paper, one Dr. Holland, since 
dead, who had ' some skill in turning a paragraph, wrote 
a note to Mr. Bryant, informing him that he was the 
proprietor of the newspaper, and that it spoke his opin- 
ions, and those of no one else, and demanded that jus- 
tice should be done him in this respect. He received 
a reply with which he was not satisfied, and failing to 
obtain any other, he sent a challenge to Mr. Bryant, by 
a friend, who was authorized to make the due arrange- 
ments for the meeting. 

It has already been seen how great, in the first years 
of this journal, was the force of custom among a certain 
class of the New York population in keeping up the 
practice of dueling. In the thirty years which had 
since elapsed, it had grown obsolete, and even ridiculous. 
Only very hare-brained young men, and sometimes offi- 
cers of the navy, ever sent or accepted a challenge to 
the field, and it no longer required any firmness to de- 
cline one. Mr. Bryant treated the matter very lightly ; 
he put the challenge in his pocket, and told the bearer 
that everything must take its proper turn, that Dr. 
Holland, having already been called a scoundrel by Mr. 



APPENDIX. 335 

Leggett, must give that affair the precedence, and that 
for his own part, he should pay no further attention to 
the matter in hand till that was settled. The affair 
passed off without other consequences. 

Meantime, no means were left untried to bring back 
the paper to its former prosperous condition. William 
G. Boggs, a practical printer, and a man of much ac- 
tivity, was taken into the concern, first with a contingent 
interest, and, in 1837, as a proprietor. The figures of 
steamboats, ships, and houses were restored to its col- 
umns, and nothing omitted which it was thought would 
attract advertisers. They came with some shyness at 
first, but at last readily and in great numbers. It re- 
quired some time to arrest the decline of the paper, and 
still more to make it move in the desired direction, but 
when once it felt the impulse, it advanced rapidly to its 
former prosperity. 

The book press of the country, about this time, had 
begun to pour forth cheap reprints of European publica- 
tions with astonishing fertility. Few works but those 
of English authors were read, inasmuch as the pub- 
lisher, having nothing to pay for copyright to the foreign 
author, could afford to sell an English work far cheaper 
than an American one written with the same degree of 
talent and attractiveness. The Evening Post was early 
on the side of those who demanded that some remedy 
should be applied to this unequal operation of our copy- 
right laws, which had the effect of expelling the Ameri- 
can author from the book market. It placed no stress, 
however, on the scheme of an international copyright 
law, as it has been called, but consistently with its course 
on all commercial questions insisted that if literary prop- 
erty is to be recognized by our laws, it ought to be 



336 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

recognized in all cities alike, without regard to the legis- 
lation of other countries ; that the author who is not 
naturalized deserves to be protected in its enjoyment 
equally with the citizen of our republic, and that to 
possess ourselves of his books simply because he is a 
stranger is as gross an inhospitality as if we denied his 
right to his baggage, or the wares which he might bring 
from abroad to dispose of in our market. 

The public mind, in the course of a short time, seemed 
to be perfectly prepared for a change in the copyright 
laws, abolishing any unequal distinctions in the right 
of property, founded on birth or citizenship. The pub- 
lishers and booksellers, who had at first been unfavor- 
able to the measure, were at length brought to give it 
their assent, but the members of Congress were not 
ready. They did not understand the question, nor did 
nine in ten of them care to understand it. No party 
purpose was to be served by studying it, or supporting 
any measure connected with it ; no disadvantage was 
likely to arise to either party from neglecting it ; and 
for this reason, more we believe than any other, the sub- 
ject has been untouched by our legislators to this day. 
It is observed that politicians by profession are very apt 
to yawn whenever it is mentioned. 

The dispute between the friends of the credit system, 
as they called themselves, and their adversaries con- 
tinued till the scheme of making the government the 
keeper of its own funds, instead of placing them in the 
banks, to be made the basis of discounts, was adopted 
by Congress. For this measure, which is now very 
generally acknowledged by men of all parties to have 
been one of the wisest ever taken by the federal govern- 
ment, and perhaps more wholesome in its effect on the 



APPENDIX. 337 

money market than any other adopted before or since, 
the country is indebted to Mr. Van Buren's administra- 
tion, and to those who sustained it against the credit 
party. The Evening Post was one of the very earliest 
in the field among the champions of that scheme, and 
lent such aid as it was able in the controversy. 

In 1840 it was engaged in the unsuccessful attempt 
to reelect Mr. Van Buren. In the four years of that 
gentleman's administration, nearly all the disastrous con- 
sequences of the reaction from the speculations of the four 
previous years were concentrated. He and his friends 
applied what is now acknowledged to be the wisest rem- 
edy, the independent treasury scheme ; but a sufficient 
time had not elapsed to experience its effects, and the 
friends of the credit system everywhere treated it as 
the most pernicious quackery. The administration of 
Mr. Van Buren was made responsible for consequences 
which it had no agency in producing, and General Har- 
rison was elected to the Presidency. 

We have now arrived at a period the history of which, 
we may presume, is so fresh in the memory of our 
readers that we need give no very circumstantial nar- 
rative of the part borne in the controversies of the time 
by the Evening Post. In this year, Parke Godwin, who 
for some time had been employed as an assistant on 
the paper, became one of its proprietors, and continued 
so until the year 1844, when the interest he held was 
transferred to Timothy A. Howe, a practical printer, 
who has ever since been one of the owners of the con- 
cern. 

In the year 1841 the proprietors began to issue a 
Weekly Evening Post, the circulation of which has been 
regularly increasing to the present moment. A Semi- 



338 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Weekly had been issued from the earliest establishment 
of the journal, and it is remarkable that the popularity 
of the Weekly has seemed, of late, to attract subscrip- 
tions to the Semi- Weekly also. 

In 1841 the subject of abolishing the punishment of 
death was brought up in the New York Legislature, by 
Mr. O'Sullivan, who for that purpose had sought an 
election to the House of Assembly as a delegate from 
this city, and w T ho prepared an excellent report giving a 
full statement of the argument for its abolition. In the 
following winter he had several able coadjutors in this 
cause, among whom was Major Auguste Davezac, who 
had studied the question under the teachings of Edward 
Livingston, and who, though a native of a French col- 
ony, was one of the finest declaimers in English of his 
time. The Evening Post took a decided part in favor 
of this change in the criminal law of the state, a change 
which it has never since ceased on proper occasions to 
urge, on the ground that in the present age there is no 
longer any necessity to inflict the penalty of death, and 
that experience has shown it to be less effectual in re- 
straining the repetition of crimes than other modes of 
punishment. The legislature, at times, seemed half per- 
suaded to try the effect of putting an end to the practice 
of taking life by sentence of law, but it finally shrunk 
from the responsibility of so important a step. 

During the time that the Executive chair was filled 
by Mr. Tyler — for General Harrison passed so soon 
from his inauguration to his grave that his name will 
scarcely be noticed in history — several of the questions 
which formerly divided parties were revived. The ques- 
tion of the independent treasury had to be debated over 
again ; the measure was repealed. The question of a 



APPENDIX. 339 

national bank came up again in Congress, and we had to 
fight the battle a second time ; the bill for creating an 
institution of this hind presented to Mr. Tyler was re- 
fused his signature and defeated. Mr. Tyler, however, 
had a dream of a peculiar national bank of his own ; 
this also was to be combatted. The compromise of 
1832, in regard to duties on imported goods, was set 
aside by Congress, without ceremony, and a scheme of 
high duties was proposed which resulted in the tariff of 
1842. Here, also, was matter for controversy. The 
question of admitting Texas into the Union, which had 
several times before been discussed in the Evening Post, 
was brought before Congress. It was warmly opposed 
in this journal, which contended that if Texas was to 
be admitted at all, a negotiation should first be opened 
with Mexico. This was not done, but the result has 
shown that such a course would have been far the wisest. 
The eager haste to snatch Texas into the Union brought 
with it the war with Mexico, the shedding of much 
blood, large conquests, California, and those dreadful 
quarrels about slavery and its extension which have 
shaken the Union. 

It is unnecessary, we believe, to refer to the part taken 
by the Evening Post in behalf of the economical policy 
which in 1842 retrieved the credit of the State of New 
York, impaired by the large expenditures for public 
works ; nor to its exertions in favor of such an altera- 
tion of the constitution, as should incorporate in the 
constitution of the State an effectual check upon further 
extravagances. That was soon done by the convention 
of 1848. 

In 1848 Mr. Boggs parted with his interest in the 
Evening Post to John Bigelow ; and William J. Tenney, 



340 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

who had been for some time past the able and useful 
assistant of Mr. Bryant, withdrew. The controversies 
which have since arisen are yet the controversies of the 
day ; they still occupy all minds, and there is no occa- 
sion to speak of their nature nor of the part we have 
taken in them. 

We have now brought our narrative down to the pres- 
ent moment. It does not become us to close without 
some expression of the kindly feeling we entertain to- 
wards those subscribers — for there are still a few of 
them — who read the Evening Post in 1801, and who 
yet read it, nor to those — and there are many such — 
in whose families it is looked upon as a sort of heir- 
loom, and who have received a partiality for it as an in- 
heritance from their parents. When these examples 
occur to our minds, we are consoled for the occasional 
displeasure and estrangement of those we had deemed 
our friends ; and we think of our journal as of something 
solid, permanent, enduring. 

This impression is strengthened when w r e reflect that 
in the mechanical department of the paper are men who 
came to it in their childhood, before any of the present 
proprietors of the paper had set foot within the office, 
and are employed here still, — worthy, industrious, and 
intelligent men. 

An experience of a quarter of a century in the con- 
duct of a newspaper should suffice to give one a pretty 
complete idea of the effect of journalism upon the char- 
acter. It is a vocation which gives an insight into 
men's motives, and reveals by w T hat influences masses of 
men are moved, but it shows the dark rather than the 
bright side of human nature, and one who is not dis- 
posed to make due allowances for the peculiar circum- 



APPENDIX. 341 

stances in which he is placed is apt to be led by it into 
the mistake that the large majority of mankind are 
knaves. It brings one perpetually in sight, at least, of 
men of various classes, who make public zeal a cover 
for private interest, and desire to avail themselves of the 
influence of the press for the prosecution of their own 
selfish projects. It fills the mind with a variety of 
knowledge relating to the events of the day, but that 
knowledge is apt to be superficial, since the necessity 
of attending to many subjects prevents the journalist 
from thoroughly investigating any. In this way it 
begets desultory habits of thought, disposing the mind 
to be satisfied with mere glances at difficult questions, 
and to dwell only upon plausible commonplaces. The 
style gains by it in clearness and fluency, but it is apt to 
become, in consequence of much and hasty writing, 
loose, diffuse, and stuffed with local barbarisms and the 
cant phrases of the day. Its worst effect is the strong 
temptation which it sets before men, to betray the cause 
of truth to public opinion, and to fall in with what are 
supposed to be the views held by a contemporaneous 
majority, which are sometimes perfectly right and some- 
times grossly wrong. 

To such temptations we hope the Evening Post, 
whatever may have been its course in other respects, 
has not often yielded. Its success and the limits to its 
success may both, perhaps, be owing to this unaccom- 
modating and insubservient quality. It is often called 
upon, by a sense of duty, to oppose itself to the general 
feeling of those from whom a commercial paper always 
must receive its support ; it never hesitates to do so. It 
sometimes finds a powerful member of that community 
occupied with projects which it deems mischievous ; it 



342 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

puts itself in his way, and frustrates his designs, if pos- 
sible. In this way it makes bitter enemies, who would 
break it down if they could ; it makes also warm 
friends, by whom it is cordially supported. Its pro- 
prietors are satisfied with its success and its expecta- 
tions. For the last quarter of a century it has been the 
only democratic paper which could subsist in New York. 
Others have come and departed like shadows. It is now 
well appointed in all its departments, and has as fair a 
prospect of surviving to another century as it had at any 
time during the last fifty years of subsisting to this 
day. 



APPENDIX B. 

Bryant's will. 

I, William Cullen Bryant, of Roslyn, in Queens 
County, Long Island, do make this my last will and tes- 
tament. 

1. I give to my daughter Fanny Bryant Godwin the 
house and land in Roslyn east of the highway where 
she now lives with her family, with all the houses and 
other buildings thereon. 

2. Also a strip of land west of the said highway two 
rods in width, to be taken from the land now occupied 
by me at said Roslyn, and to extend from the highway 
to the water of Roslyn harbor as far as I own. 

3. Also all the land and buildings adjoining the prem- 
ises now occupied by my said daughter Fanny bought 
by me of Stephen Smith. Also all the Mudge Farm 
owned by me, including the land and buildings now 
occupied under a lease by Amy Mudge and her two 
nieces. 

4. Also all my lands and buildings in Roslyn west of 
the highway and south of the fence, which forms the 
southern boundary of the premises now occupied by W. 
D. Wilson and of the road leading to his house. 

5. Also the little piece of land east of said highway 
and the last mentioned lands and buildings bought by me 
of Isaac Henderson. 

6. I also give her one half of all my government 



344 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

bonds and government securities of whatever nature, 
subject, however, to charges hereinafter mentioned. 

I also except from the Mudge Farm bequeathed to 
the said Fanny four acres hereinafter mentioned on the 
northeast corner of said farm. 

7. Moreover I give to my said daughter Fanny the 
Snell Farm in Cummington, purchased by me of a Mr. 
Ellis, with all the buildings thereon and a right of way 
thereto by a road now made, but reserving from this 
bequest the use of certain springs on the northeast cor- 
ner of the farm now used by me on the Bryant Home- 
stead. 

1. I give to my second daughter Julia Sands Bryant 
all my real estate in Roslyn not devised to the other 
daughter, including the dwelling-houses, and buildings 
now occupied by George B. Cline and W. D. Wilson 
— a tract of land extending from the highway near 
the shore to the highway passing by the Roslyn Ceme- 
tery. 

2. I give also to my said daughter Julia all my 
books, pictures, engravings, furniture, and other mov- 
ables, animals, carriages, farming implements, and my 
crops gathered or on the fields on whatsoever part of my 
real estate at Roslyn they may be. 

3. I also give her all my real estate in the city of 
New York. 

4. Also all my real estate in the State of Illinois. 

5. Also the farm and buildings in Cummington called 
the Bryant Homestead, with the use of the springs in the 
northeastern corner of the Snell Farm as said springs 
are now used. 

6. Also all my furniture, books, pictures, and other 
movables of every kind at the Bryant Homestead afore- 



APPENDIX. 845 

said, and at Number 24 West Sixteenth Street in the 
city of New York. 

7. Also one half of my government bonds and govern- 
ment securities of whatever nature, subject to charges 
hereinafter mentioned. 

1. I give to my two daughters already named all my 
right, title, and interest in the Evening Post newspaper 
establishment and job printing office, and all the per- 
sonal property appertaining, and debts due to the same, 
to be possessed by them in such a manner that each 
shall have, together with what interest therein she may 
possess before my death, an equal share with the other. 
And this they are to take subject to any indebtedness 
which may appear against me on the books of the 
Evening Post, and subject also to any charges herein- 
after mentioned. 

2. I also give my said two daughters jointly all my 
property in the copyright of any of my published writ- 
ings. 

1. I give to George B. Cline, of Roslyn aforesaid, 
four acres of land in the northeastern corner of the 
Mudge Farm in one quadrangular parcel at the intersec- 
tion of the two highways, to be set off to him in such 
a manner that the width of two acres shall be on each 
highway. 

2. I also bequeath to the said Cline eight thousand 
dollars, to be paid out of the profits of the Evening 
Post if any be due me on the books, and if not, then 
out of the government bonds and securities aforemen- 
tioned. 

1. I bequeath to William Bryant Cline, son of the 
said George B. Cline, two hundred dollars, to be paid out 
of the same funds. 



346 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

If either of my daughters should die without children, 
I direct that whatever she is to receive by this instru- 
ment shall go to her surviving sister. I direct further 
that the property given to my daughters shall be settled 
upon them in such a manner as to be free from any 
intermeddling or control of the husband of either of 
them. 

In case that I should survive both of my daughters 
and their children and direct descendants, I direct that 
my estate, after paying the legacies to other persons, 
shall be divided among my nephews and nieces and the 
nephews and nieces of my late wife Fanny Fairchild 
Bryant, each of them to receive an equal share with 
the exception that Mrs. Ellen T. Mitchell, daughter of 
my sister Sarah, and Mrs. Hannah H. Culver, daughter 
of my wife's sister Esther Henderson, and Anna R. 
Fairchild, daughter of my wife's brother Egbert N. 
Fairchild, shall receive each a share twice as large as 
the shares of the others. 

Should I die possessed of any property not herein 
specified, I direct it to be equally divided between my 
two daughters, or if that cannot be done, then I direct 
that it follow the disposition of the other property made 
by this will. 

I give to each of my grandchildren living at my 
death a copy of my poems of such edition as they may 
choose. 

I empower my executors to convey my real estate by 
deed whenever it shall become necessary or expedient. 

I constitute my friends John A. Graham, John Bige- 
low, John H. Piatt, George B. Cline, and my daughter 
Julia S. Bryant executors of this my last will and testa- 
ment. 



APPENDIX. 347 

I revoke all my previous wills and codicils. 

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand 
and seal this sixth day of December in the year one 
thousand eight hundred and seventy-two. 

Wm. Cullen Bryant. 

Signed, sealed, and published by the testator, etc., etc. 

Isaac Henderson, 18 West 54th St , N. Y. 
Albert H. King, 563 Willoughby Ave., Br. 
Isaac Henderson, Jr., 18 West 54th St., N. Y. 



INDEX. 



Abbotsford, 187. 

Academy of Design, 231. 

Adams, John Quincy, 150. 

44 Ages, The," 52, 148. 

Alden, Anna, 3. 

Alden, Captain John, 3. 

Alden, Rev. Dr., 160, 275, 278. 

Alger, Rev. W. R., address on Bryant's 
reception by the Goethe Club, 252. 

Allen, Dr., 225. 

American Citizen, The, 316. 

American Free Trade League, dinner 
to Bryant on resigning its presi- 
dency, 231. 

Anderson, Henry J., edits Atlantic 
Magazine, 55 ; associated with Bry- 
ant in editing the New York Review 
and Athenaeum Magazine, 60 ; prom- 
ises to find a purchaser of the Even- 
ing Post, 86. 

Andrews, M., publishes first collection 
of Bryant's poems in England, 122. 

Arnold, Matthew, Hartley Coleridge 
reads the lines " To a Waterfowl " 
to, 42. 

Athenaeum, The, 55. 

Atlantic Magazine, The, 55. 

Atlantic Monthly, publishes Bryant's 
translation from the fifth book of 
the Odyssey, 161. 

Audax paupertas, 21. 

Aurora, The, newspaper edited by 
William Duane, 316. 

44 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 
223. 

Bancroft, George, president of the 

Century Association, 219. 
Barlow, Joel, Bryant's opinion of, as a 

poet, 46, 47. 
Bartlett, Dr., editor of the Albion, his 

newspaper ethics, 100. 
Battle of the Kegs, The, by Francis 

Hopkinson, 46. 
Baylies, William, Bryant enters his 

office as a student of law, 27 ; their 

confidential relations, 29, 35. 



Beecher, Henry Ward, his sermons, 
274. 

Bellows, Dr. Henry W., Bryant at- 
tends his church, 275 ; remarks on 
the regularity of Bryant's attend- 
ance and his religious life, 279, 384 ; 
delivers Bryant's funeral discourse, 
305, 307. 

Bennett, James Gordon, influence on 
American journalism, 72. 

Benvenuto Cellini, 236. 

Biddle, Nicholas, encouraged delirious 
speculation, 333. 

Bierstadt, contributes to the portfolio 
presented to Bryant on his seven- 
tieth birthday, 231. 

Bigelow, John, invites Bryant to head 
the Tilden electoral ticket for the 
presidency, 243 ; delivers a commem- 
orative address on Bryant's death 
before the Century Club, 309 ; be- 
comes part proprietor of the Even- 
ing Post, 339 ; named one of the 
executors of Bryant's will, 347. 

Blanc, Louis, Bryant meets him in 
London, 189. 

Boggs, William G., sells his interest 
in the Evening Post, 335. 

Boker, Mr., poetical tribute to Bryant 
on his seventieth birthday, 225, 230. 

Bolingbroke, 289. 

Bonaparte, disciplined by young Bry- 
ant, 16, 91 ; when First Cdnsul Bry- 
ant began to read newspapers, 234. 

Bread and Milk College, 11. 

Bridge water, 21, 26. 

Brooks, Charles F., 225. 

Brooks, Phillips, 279. 

Brown, J. G., contributes to the art- 
ists' portfolio presented to Bryant 
on his seventieth birthday, 231. 

Browne, Solyman, 45. 

Burns, Robert, his monument, 185. 

Bryant, Arthur, 237. 

Bryant, Dr. Peter, 4, 5, 8, note, 39, 259, 
274. 

Bryant, Dr. Philip, 4, 27. 



350 



INDEX. 



Bryant, Ichabod, 4. 

Bryant, John C, 86, 88, 149, 166, 197, 
237. 

Bryant, Miss Julia Sands, some remi- 
niscences of her father, 278, 280, 
301 ; the inspiration of some of his 
sweetest poems, 309 ; named an ex- 
ecutrix of his will, 344. 

Bryant, Mrs. William C, ill at Naples, 
190 ; death, 191 ; lines to her mem- 
ory, 192, 269. 

Bryant, Stephen, 3. 

Bryant, William Cullen, precocity, 2, 
9 ; ancestry, 3 ; a good speller, 10 ; 
a fleet runner, 11 ; learns Latin and 
Greek, 11 ; receives 9d for a rhymed 
version of the first chapter of Job, 
12 ; passion for poetry, and prays to 
be a poet, 13 ; the " Embargo," 14- 
16; enters Williams College, 17; 
lines on, 18 ; studies law, 25, 27 ; 
first love, 26 ; reads a Fourth of July 
poem, 28 ; denounces the War of 
1812 and President Madison, 29; 
counsels resistance to the federal 
government, 29 ; obtains a commis- 
sion as adjutant in the Massachu- 
setts infantry, 32 ; admitted to the 
bar, 33 ; opens a law office at Plain- 
field, 34 ; removes to Great Barring- 
ton, 35 ; " Thanatopsis " published, 
40; "To a Waterfowl," 42, 44; es- 
say on American poetry, 46 ; chosen 
tithing-man and justice of the peace, 
50 ; death of his father, 50 ; marries, 
51; reads "The Ages" before the 
Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard 
College, 52 ; first collection of his 
poems published, 53 ; visits Boston, 
53 ; first visit to New York, 56 ; 
contributions to the United States 
Literary Gazette, 56; death of his 
sister, 57 ; revisits New York, 60 ; 
writes for the New York Review, 
61, 63; removes to New York, 61, 
63 ; lectures on English poetry, 64 ; 
appointed professor in a school of 
the National Academy of Design, 
64 ; lectures on mythology, 64 ; a 
literary adventurer, 64 ; becomes 
joint editor and quarter owner of 
the United States Review and Lit- 
erary Gazette, 65 ; " The Journey of 
Life," G6; enters the office of the 
Evening Post, 67 ; becomes part pro- 
prietor, 68 ; edits the Talisman, 68 ; 
contributions to the United States 
Review, 68 ; becomes editor-in-chief 
of the New York Evening Post, 69 ; 
his editorial habits, 72 ; advice to a 
young journalist, 73 ; force of his 
example, 76; sympathizes with 



President Jackson and the Demo- 
cratic party, 78 ; his views on public 
questions, 78 ; the riots of 1863, 84 ; 
tires of journalism, 86; purchases a 
country home at Roslyn, 94 ; pur- 
chases the old homestead at Cum- 
mington, 95 ; poems published in 
London, 117 ; his opinion of Samuel 
Rogers, 123; letter to the Plain- 
dealer commenting upon Mr. Ir- 
ving's defense of the alteration he 
permitted to be made in the English 
edition of Bryant's poems, 136 ; not 
a writer of occasional poems, 148 ; 
reads a poem before the New York 
Historical Society on the occasion of 
its fiftieth anniversary, 150 ; why he 
never wrote a long poem, 154 ; no 
taste for music, 156 ; translates 
Homer, 160, 162, 168 ; its sale, 169 ; 
compared with that of Pope's trans- 
lation, 170 ; visits his brothers in 
Illinois, 176 ; writes " The Prairies," 
177 ; sails for Europe, 178 ; first im- 
pressions of France and Italy, 179 ; 
sails for New York, 179 ; returns to 
Europe, 181 ; returns to New York, 
182 ; his reception in England, 182 ; 
visits Cuba, 185; third voyage to 
Europe, 186 ; fourth voyage to Eu- 
rope, 188 ; visits the East, 188 ; fifth 
voyage to Europe, 190 ; Mrs. Bryant 
ill at Naples, 190 ; death of Mrs. 
Bryant, 191 ; sixth and last trip 
across the Atlantic, 194 ; meets 
Hawthorne, 194 ; visits Mexico, 197 ; 
publishes " Letters of a Traveler," 
198 ; commemorative discourses, 
203 ; his memory, 212, 292 ; declines 
an invitation to a public dinner on his 
return from his first visit to Europe, 
217 ; declines the office of regent of 
the university, 217 ; his seventieth 
birthday celebrated by the Century 
Association, his speech on the occa- 
sion, 219; public dinner on resign- 
ing the presidency of the American 
Free Trade League, 231 ; receives an 
address and testimonial on his eight- 
ieth birthday, 232 ; a guest of Gov- 
ernor Tilden, at Albany, 238 ; a pub- 
lic reception tendered him by the 
legislature, 238 ; declines to let his 
name head the Tilden electoral 
ticket for the presidency, 244-248 ; 
did not vote for either candidate for 
President in 1876, 251 ; delivers an 
address at a reception given him by 
the Goethe Club, 252 ; letter in re- 
gard to his personal habits, 260 ; 
elected president of the New York 
Homoeopathic Society, and delivers 



INDEX. 



351 



his inaugural address, 264 ; unites 
with " the visible church," 281 ; 
" The Cloud on the Way," 283 ; his 
notions of charity not conventional, 
286 ; founds libraries at Roslyn and 
Cummington, 288 ; his dignity, 295 ; 
death, 301 ; reminiscences of the 
first half century of the Evening 
Post, 312 ; his will, 343. 

Buckminster, the Rev. Mr., 274. 

Bunker Hill, 4. 

Burgoyne, General, Bryant's grandfa- 
ther witnessed his surrender, 4. 

Burnhani, Michael, becomes business 
manager of the Evening Post, 67, 
320. 

Butler, Charles, 43. 

Byron, Lord, his views of ethical po- 
etry, 120. 

Calvinism in New England, 274. 

Carnochan, Dr., consulted in Bryant's 
last illness, 300. 

Carter, James G., 65. 

Cass, General Lewis, 185. 

Cedarmere, purchased by Bryant, 94, 
266. 

Cellini, Benvenuto, 236. 

Centennial year (1876), Bryant de- j 
clines to write a poem for, 150. 

Century Association celebrate Bry- ' 
ant's seventieth birthday, 219, 223, 
309. 

Channing, El ward T., 1. 

C banning, William Ellery, 274. 

Chapman, Mr., publisher in London, 
Bryant attends one of his recep- i 
tions, 188. 

Cheetham, James, editor of American 
Citizen, 316. 

Chicago Literary Club celebrates Bry- 
ant's eightieth birthday, 237. 

Christ "the perfect model," 276. 

Church, Dr., features of his verse, 46. 

Church, Frederick E., contributes to 
the portfolio presented by the art- 
ists of the Century Association to 
Bryant on his seventieth birthday, 
231. 

Cline, George B., 84, 265, 269, 271, 278, 
286, 287, 344, 345. 

Cline, William Bryant, 345. 

Cole, Thomas, Bryant's discourse on, 
202. 

Coleman, William, first editor of the 
Evening Post, 67, 69, 312 ; shoots 
Thompson in a duel, 317. 

Coleridge, Hartley, reads Bryant's 
lines "To a Waterfowl" to Mat- 
thew Arnold, 43. 

College, Bread and Milk, 11. 

College, Harvard, 52, 148, 275. 



College, Williams, 17, 148, 206. 

College, Yale, 18. 

Colly er, Rev. Robert, 237. 

Colman contributes to the portfolio 
presented by the artists of the Cen- 
tury Association to Bryant on his 
seventieth birthday, 231. 

Columbus, 91. 

Convention, Hartford, 32. 

Cooper, J. Fenimore, 56 ; Bryant's 
discourse on, 203, 294. 

Cowper, William, 62, 159. 

Coxe, Bishop, 225. 

Croaker & Co., 323. 

Cromwell, 91. 

Culver, Mrs. Hannah H., 346. 

Cummington, 1, 8. 

Curtis, George William, 302, 309. 

D'Alembert, note, 156. 

Dana, Richard H., one of the managers 
of the North American Review, 1 ; 
skeptical about " Thanatopsis " hav- 
ing been written on the western side 
of the Atlantic, 2 ; declines an edi- 
torial position on the Evening Post, 
67 ; urges Bryant to renounce poli- 
tics and stick to poetry, 102 ; chokes 
over the dedication of Bryant's po- 
ems to Rogers, 122 ; urges Bryant 
to write a long poem, 155, 291. 

Darwin, Dr., his theory of evolution, 
206, 254. 

Davezac, Auguste, 338. 

Diwes, Mr., 259, 267, 268, 270. 

D^rby, J. C., correspondence about 
the candidates for President in 1S76, 
246-250. 

Dewey, Chester, professor at Williams 
College, 17. 

Dewey, Dr. Orville, 165, 191, 264, 275. 

Dewey. Miss Jane, 279. 

Dickens, Charles, 291. 

Dorsheimer, Lieutenant-Governor, ad- 
dress as president of the Senate to 
Bryant, 228. 

Douglass, Senator Stephen A., 28. 

Drake, Rodman, 323. 

Dryden, John, 151. 

Duane, William, editor of The Aurora, 
316. 

Durand, John, 231. 

Dwight as a poet, Bryant's opinion of, 
46, 47. 

Dwight, Theodore, editor of the Daily 
Advertiser, 321. 

Edinburgh, 184. 

Eliot, George, 188. 

Ely, Rev. Dr., 275, 278. 

" Embargo," a satire, 15, 16. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, tribute to 



352 



INDEX. 



Bryant on his seventieth birthday, 

228. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, has no arti- 
cle devoted to Bryant, 121. 

Evening Post, The New York, 67, 70, 
72, 89, 176, 179 ; Bryant's reminis- 
cences of, 312 ; bequeathed to his 
daughters, 345. 

Everett, Edward, Bryant breakfasts 
with, 124 ; his opinion of Bryant's 
poetry, 158, 213, 225, 230. 

Fairchild, Anna R., 346. 

Fairchild, Egbert N., 346. 

Fields, Osgood & Co., publish Bryant's 
translations from Homer, 162. 

Fitch, Dr., President of Williams Col- 
lege, 17, 18. 

Follen, Rev. Dr. Charles, 275. 

France, Bryant's first impressions of, 
177. 

Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, 70. 

Free Soil Party, 105. 

Free Trade League, 182, 210, 221. 

Freneau, Philip, Bryant's opinion of 
his poetry, 46. 

Gazette, The United States Literary, 
56. 

Gilford, contributes to the artists' port- 
folio presented to Bryant on his sev- 
entieth birthday, 231. 

Glasgow, 184. 

Godwin, Bryant, 84. 

Godwin, Fanny Bryant, 343, 344. 

Godwin, Parke, the fame of " Thana- 
topsis," 40 ; anecdote about the poem 
" To a Waterfowl." 42-44 ; remi- 
niscences of Bryant as an editor, 113, 
246, 251, 291 ; marries Miss Bryant, 
309 ; associated with Bryant in the 
Evening Post, 337. 

Goethe Club gives Bryant a reception, 
252. 

Graham, John A., 300; executor of 
Bryant's will, 346. 

Gram, Dr. Hans B., first apostle of 
homoeopathy in New York, 263. 

Grant, Ulysses S., Bryant's estimate 
of, 242. 

Gray, Dr. John F., Bryant's physi- 
cian, 301. 

Gray, Mr., contributes to the artists' 
portfolio presented to Bryant on his 
seventieth birthday, 231. 

Great Barrington, Bryant established 
there as a lawyer, 35, 61, 62, 259. 

Green, Joseph, 46. 

"Green River," 41. 

Hale, John P., 105. 
Hall am, Henry, 183. 



Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 56, 203, 217, 225, 
322, 323. 

Halleck, Moses, 11, 12. 

Hamilton, Philip, " murdered in a 
duel," 316. 

Harrison, President William Henry, 
338. 

Hartford Convention, 32. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, meets Bryant 
in Rome, 194 j his impressions of 
the poet, 194. 

Hayes, Rutherford B., 248, 251. 

Henderson, Isaac, 84, 246, 343, 347. 

Henderson, Isaac, Jr., 347. 

Henderson, Mrs., aunt of Mrs. Bryant, 
51, 346. 

Hennessey, Mr., contributes to the 
portfolio presented by the artists of 
the Century to Bryant on his seven- 
tieth birthday, 231. 

Herald, The New York, 71, 100. 

Herschel, Sir John, 183. 

Hicks, Thomas, contributes to the 
portfolio presented by the artists of 
the Century to Bryant on his seven- 
tieth birthday, 231. 

Historical Society, the New York, 
Bryant reads a poem before, on its 
fiftieth anniversary, 150. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, tribute to 
Bryant on his seventieth birthday, 
223, 225. 

Holland, Dr., editor of the Times, 
challenges Bryant, 334. 

Homer, Bryant undertakes the trans- 
lation of, 160 ; the publication of, 
162. 

Homoeopathy, Bryant embraces the 
system, and elected president of 
the New York Homoeopathic Socie- 
ty, 264. 

Honey wood, St. John, 48. 
; Hopkins, 46, 47. 
i Houghton, Lord, 182. 

Howe, Julia Ward, 225. 

Howe, Mr., 25. 

Howe, Timothy A., 327. 

Humphreys, 46, 47. 

Huntington, Daniel, 231. 

" Inscription at the Entrance to a 
Wood," 40. 

Irving, Washington, inquires about 
Bryant and Halleck, 118 ; promises 
to find a publisher in London for 
Bryant's poems, 120 ; sends a copy 
of the London edition to Bryant, 
121 ; replies to the charge by Win. 
Leggett of " literary pusillanimity," 
138, 182. 

Italy, Bryant's first impressions of, 
179. 



INDEX. 



353 



Jackson, President Andrew, 84, 327, 

328. 
Jefferson, President Thomas, 14, 15. 
Jeffrey, Lord, 187. 
Johnson, Eastman, contributes to the 

portfolio presented to Bryant by 

the artists of the Century on his 

seventieth birthday, 231. 
Jones, Sir William, life of, reconciles 

Bryant to the study of the law, 

25. 
Journalism, 71, 100, 111; Bryant's 

opinion of, as a profession, 340. 
Juarez, President of Mexico, Bryant's 

reception by, 197. 

Katejeneff, Professor, translates po- 
ems of Bryant into the Russian 
tongue, 231. 

Kensett, W., one of the contributors 
to the portfolio presented to Bry- 
ant on his seventieth birthday by 
the artists of the Century, 231. 

King, Albert H., 347. 

Kingsley, Canon, 289. 

Lafarge, W., one of the contributors 
to the portfolio presented by the 
artists of the Century to Mr. Bry- 
ant on his seventieth birthday, 231. 

Leggett, "William, establishes the 
Plaindealer, 129, 132 ; accuses 
Washington Irving of " literary pu- 
sillanimity," 129 ; associated with 
Bryant in the Evening Post, 178, 
327, 329 ; retires from the Evening 
Post and establishes the Plaindealer, 
332. 

League, The Free Trade, 182, 210. 

Leroux, Pierre, 189. 

" Letters of a Traveler," 198. 

Leutze, Mr., one of the contributors to 
the portfolio presented by the artists 
of the Century to Mr. Bryant on his 
seventieth birthday, 231. 

Licinus, Caesar's barber, lines on, 216. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 80, 106 ; first meet- 
ing with Bryant, 177; lectures in 
New York, 218. 

Longfellow, descended from John Al- 
den of the Mayflower, 3; deplores 
the drudgery of his life as a profes- 
sor, 92 ; Evangeline, 223. 

Lowell, James Russell, 223; poem 
read at the celebration of Bryant's 
seventieth birthday, 227. 

Lyell, Dr., 183. 

Magazine, The Atlantic, 55. 
Magazine, The New York Review and 

Athenaeum, 60. 
Malherbe, 156, note. 



Mason, Charles, temporarily in charge 
of the Evening Post, 331. 

Mayflower, the ship, 3. 

Mazzini, 214, 297. 

McEntee, W., contributor to the port- 
folio presented by the artists of the 
Century to Bryant on his seventieth 
birthday, 231. 

McFingal, 47. 

McGuire, address as Speaker of the 
Assembly to Bryant, 240. 

Mechanics Bank, anecdote of J)hu 
Randolph, 209. 

Mexico, 111, 197. 

Milnes, Monckton, 182. 

Milton, John, 91, 92, 152, 158. 

Mitchell, Ellen T., 346. 

Moll, M., his argument against the rev- 
olution of the earth on its axis, 212. 

Montgomery, James, appearance de- 
scribed, 183. 

Moore, Tom, Bryant meets him at 
breakfast, 182 ; Rogers' anecdote of, 
187. 

Morse, Professor, tribute to, by Bry- 
ant, 204. 

Mullins, Priscilla, ancestor both of 
Bryant and Longfellow, 3. 

Murray, John, declines to publish 
Bryant's poems, 119, 121. 

Mythology, Bryant lectures on, 64. 

New York city, dirty, noisy, uncom- 
fortable, and dear, 87. 

New York Historical Society, Bryant 
reads a poem before, on its fiftieth 
anniversary, 150. 

New York Review, 61. 

Nordhoff, Charles, 272. 

Occasional poems, Bryant not a writer 

of, 148. 
Odyssey, Bryant's translations from 

fifth book, 160. 
Old age, 220. 

Osgood, Rev. Samuel, 275. 
O'Sullivan, John L., 338. 

Paine, Robert Treat, 48. 

Parsons, Chief Justice, 398, note. 

Parsons, Theophilus, 56. 

Paulding, James, 217. 

Paupertas, audax, 21. 

Phi Beta Kappa Society, reads " The 
Ages" before, 52, 148, 213. 

Phillips, Willard, editor of The North 
American Review, 1, 38-40. 

Pierce, President Franklin, 105. 

Pierpont, Rev. John, tribute to Bry- 
ant on his seventieth birthday, 223, 
225, 227. 

Plaindealer, The, letter to, from 



354 



INDEX. 



Washington Irving, 129 ; established 
by William Leggett, 332. 

Plainfield, Bryant begins the practice 
of the law at, 34 ; writes the lines 
"Toa Waterfowl " at, 42. 

Piatt, John H., an executor of Bry- 
ant's will, 346. 

Pope, Alexander, his paper-saving 
habit, 110; advised to make "cor- 
rectness his great aim," 155 ; Bryant 
differs with, about the necessity of 
rhyme for a translation of Homer, 
163 ; his Homer not all his own 
work, 168; Bryant's pocket com- 
panion, 292. 

Poverty, enterprising, 21. 

Powers, Rev. R. N., tribute to Bry- 
ant on his seventieth birthday, 226 ; 
discourse on Bryant before the Chi- 
cago Literary Club, 237; Bryant's 
estimate of Grant in a letter to, 
242. 

"Quaker poet," The, tribute to Bry- 
ant on his seventieth birthday, 231. 
Quarles, 93. 

Randolph, John, demands cash for a 
note of the Mechanics Bank of New 
York, 209. 

Read, T. Buchanan, tribute to Bryant 
on his seventieth birthday, 225. 

Review, New York, 61. 

Review, North American, 1, 2, 27, 39, 
40, 46, 56. 

Review, United States, and Literary 
Gazette, 65. 

Richards, Joseph H., 260. 

Riker, Richard, 323. 

Ripley, George, 214. 

Robinson, Crabb, 184. 

Rogers, Samuel, Bryant's poems dedi- 
cated to, by Irving, 122 ; his opinion 
of, 123. 

Roslyn, 94, 288, 307, 343, 344. 

Ruppaner, Dr., 253. 

Russian Academy of St. Petersburg 
elects Bryant an honorary member, 
232. 

Sands, Robert C, 56, 68, 325. 
Scott, Walter, 184. 
Scribner's Monthly on Bryant, 303. 
Sedgwick, Miss Catharine M., 54, 55, 

225. 
Sedgwick, Charles, 54, 148. 
Sedgwick, Henry, 55, 69, note. 
Sedgwick, Professor, 183. 
Sedgwick, Robert, 54, 56. 
Sedgwick, Theodore, Jr., 85, note. 
Sewell, Rev. Mr., 54. 
Sigourney, Miss, 223. 



Slave trade in New York, 315. 

Smith, Goldwin, 225. 

Snell, Ebenezer, 4, 295. 

Snell, Josiah, 3. 

Snell, Sarah, 5. 

Snell, Thomas, 11. 

Southey, Robert, 187. 

Sparks, Jared, 56. 

Spencer, Herbert, 189. 

Sprague, tribute to Bryant on his sev- 
entieth birthday, 225. 

Stedman, E. C, tribute to the memory 
of Bryant, 309. 

Stockbridge, 35. 

Stoddard, Richard Henry, tributes to 
Bryant, 201, 225, 229, 309. 

Strong, Caleb, Governor, gives Bryant 
a commission in the Massachusetts 
army, 32. 

Sturges, Jonathan, 232. 

Sumner, Charles, 196. 

Swift, Dean, 171. 

Talisman, The, Bryant contributes to, 
68. 

Tallmadge, N. P., driven out of the 
Democratic party, 333. 

Taylor, Bayard, tributes to Bryant, 
225-309. 

" Thanatopsis," 1, 40, 174. 

Thompson, Mr., shot in a duel by 
Coleman, 317. 

" Thoughts on the Religious Life," 
Bryant's preface to, 275. 

Tilden, Governor Samuel J., Ill ; 
gives Bryant a reception at the cap- 
itol, 238; Bryant favorable to his 
nomination for governor, 242 ; Bry- 
ant declines to serve as an elector 
on the Tilden presidential ticket, 
244 ; his opinions of Tilden, 247, 
250. 

" To a Waterfowl," 42-44, 67. 

Trumbull, his verse, 46, 47. 

Tuckerman, H. T., 225. 

Tweed, William M., a monument to 
his memory excluded from Central 
Park, 216. 

Tyler, President John, 338. 

United States Literary Gazette, 56. 
United States Review and Literary 
Gazette, 65. 

Van Buren, President Martin, 185, 337. 
"Vates, Patrise," 229. 
Verplanck, Gulian C, 68, 111, 119, 
203, 217, 237. 

Walker, Dr., 225. 

Walsh, William, his advice to Pope, 
155. 



INDEX. 



355 



Washington, George, Bryant's poem 
on his birthday, 174. 

Waterfowl, To a, 42-44, 67. 

Waterston, Rev. Mr., administers the 
communion to Bryant, 281. 

Whittier, Richard Greenleaf, tribute 
to Bryant on his seventieth birth- 
day, 223, 225. 

Williams, Clifton, 47. 

Williams College, 17, 148, 206. 

Willis, N. P., tribute to Bryant on his 
seventieth birthday, 223, 229. 



Wilson, James Grant, account of the 

death of Bryant, 298. 
Wordsworth, William, wears Rogers' 

clothes to court, 128 ; Bryant's visit 

to, 184 ; Rogers' anecdote of, 187. 
Worthington, Bryant commences the 

study of law at, 25, 268. 
Wotton, Sir Henry, quoted, 157. 

Yale College, 18. 
Young, Dr., 151. 



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